TAO LEIGH GOFFE, PhD

Tao Leigh Goffe is a critically-acclaimed writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York. Dr. Goffe is an associate professor of literary history and cultural theory at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is part of the department of Gender and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. For the past fifteen years she has worked as an academic. She is often invited to give keynote lectures in her specialities of colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe’s debut book DARK LABORATORY is a love letter to and from islands, exploring the origins of race as a concept and the climate crisis (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK), 2025). It has been praised in the New York Times, the Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers’ Weekly, and the Atlantic. She is at work on two new books: BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT (Duke University Press) and MILK: A HISTORY AND A FUTURE (Doubleday). She is also directing a film on climate crisis and the realities of African American and Native American life in coastal regions. Her paintings, sculpture, video, and sound work have been featured in solo installations at botanical gardens and group exhibitions. Her video installation BLACK PACIFIC, CHINESE ATLANTIC and was most recently part of the Ninth Asian Art Biennial in Taichung.