TAO LEIGH GOFFE, PhD

Tao Leigh Goffe is a critically-acclaimed writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary sound artist who was born in London and grew up between the UK and New York City. She has been a fellow at Harvard University since 2024.

Dr. Goffe earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, and her Ph.D. from Yale University. For the past fifteen years she has taught at the university-level in topics ranging from Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald to Black Studies to environmental humanities. Dr. Goffe is an associate professor of literary history and cultural theory at the City University of New York, (Earth and Environmental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center)(Hunter College, Women and Gender Studies). Over the years, she has been invited to give numerous keynote lectures in histories of race, geology (AGU), climate, performance studies (UCLA), architecture (SAH), and media technologies.

Dr. Goffe’s debut book DARK LABORATORY is a love letter to and from islands, exploring Christopher Columbus’ origin story in the climate crisis (Doubleday / Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK), 2025). It has been praised in the New York Times, the Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers’ Weekly, the Times Literary Supplement, 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 in group exhibitions at national museums in Jamaica, Philadelphia, and Taiwan. Her two-channel video installation BLACK PACIFIC, CHINESE ATLANTIC (2024) was commissioned as part of the Ninth Asian Art Biennial in Taichung. Her artwork and research has been supported by major grants from the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.