Zay Dale
Ph.D.
- idale@nd.edu
Areas of Expertise
20th Century African American Literature, Black Masculinity, Black and White Literary Racial Spaces, Slave Textiles, Black Trans Feminism, Transnational African American Literature, and Irish Drama.
Biography
Zay Dale is a Ph.D. Candidate and a recipient of a University Presidential Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. He studies black masculinity and the aesthetics of black violence in Early to Mid-20th Century black texts. He is interested in examining the radical irruptions of black violence in 20th Century black texts, and studies how, where, and why violence happens in black texts. Some questions that guide Zay’s research are: Do we get restorative justice through the aesthetics of black violence? Where do the facts of black death and fiction meet? How does the fact of black death bleed into its fictionalization? What is the distinction between black violent form and content in literature? Does black death have to be qualified as a spectacle once its narrative is reclaimed by black people? Can black violence be understood as un/gendered? Why do we need to transmute black death into literature? What is the distinction between violence of the flesh and violence of the skin, or violence of the physical and violence of the metaphysical?
Recent Scholarly Activity
Peer Reviewed Articles
Dale, Zay. “Who Sees Ghosts? Metaphysical Blackness in The Hairy Ape.” Eugene O’Neill Review. Penn State University Press. (Accepted, forthcoming, Spring 2025).
Dale, Zay. “Black Radical Aesthetics of Anger and Violence in Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright.” The Comparatist. University of North Carolina Press. (Accepted, forthcoming, Fall 2024).
Editor Reviewed Articles
Dale, Zay. “Ethereal Fabric: Exploring Textiles and Black Existence in America.” ASAP/J. John Hopkins University Press (Summer 2024, online).
Book Chapters
Dale, Isaih. “The Essence of the Black Man: An Exploration of Black Masculinity through Double Consciousness in Native Son.” In Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space. Editors: Dr. Mika’il Petin and Dr. Mark C. Hopson. (Lexington Press), In print, November 2020.
Book Reviews
Dale, Zay. Review of Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (2021). Journal of Midwest Modern Language Association. Volume 55, Number 1, Spring 2022, pp. 153-156. (In Print)
Public Facing Essays
“Studying Sean O’Casey and Negro Spirituals in the National Library of Ireland,” Europe in the World, Nanovic Institute for European Studies (Fall 2023).
Select Conference Presentations
“Obscured Horror: Blackness and the Nonhuman in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Nope,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA), Palm Springs, CA. November 2024.
“On the Violence of Textiles and Black Skin,” Costume Institute of the African Diaspora Conference, London UK. July 2024.
“Black Radical Aesthetics of Violence and the Resistance of Being in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha,” American Literature Association (ALA), Chicago, IL. May 2024.
Invited Lecture, “My Experience Teaching Black Literature in Westville Correctional Facility.” The Graduate School and Center for Social Concerns. University of Notre Dame. January 2023.
‘You Got Ether in Those Clothes’: Black Textiles and Radical Violent Irruptions in Invisible Man, Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA), Minneapolis, Minnesota. November 2022.
‘Sing for us a Negro Spiritual’: Black Radical Irruptions in Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie, American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), Virtual National Conference. April 2022.
“Black Bodies and Catastrophic Spaces: Reading Their Eyes Were Watching God as Climatic Injustice Fiction,” Cornell University. April 2022.
“The Immobility of Time and Liminal Memory in Marcel Proust's Swann's Way,” College English Association Conference (CEA), New Orleans, Louisiana. March 2019.