UC Berkeley English Welcomes Professor Farah Bakaari

Headshot of Professor Farah Bakaari
August 28, 2025

This fall semester, we are delighted to welcome Farah Bakaari as Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of English. Farah Bakaari is a scholar of 20th and 21st century African literature. She joins Berkeley English after receiving her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her teaching and research interests include postcolonial studies, questions of comparison, political theory and the novel as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Bakaari's writing has appeared in Journal for the African Literatures AssociationRepresentationsDiacriticsGlobal NetworksThe Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry as well as popular outlets, like Africa is a CountryThe Los Angeles Review of Books, and Geeska. She serves on the Executive Council of the African Literature Association and is a member of the UC Berkeley Editorial Advisory Board of Critical Times. She has previously served on the editorial board of Diacritics. She is a founding member and an editor-in-chief of the digital little magazine Mid Theory Collective. Bakaari was born and raised in Somaliland.