Matthew Molinaro

MA Candidate

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

  • Black studies
  • Cultural and Intellectual History
  • Social Movements
  • Visual Culture

Biography

Matthew Molinaro (he/him) is an MA student in the Department of English and Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies. His current research, situated in African, Caribbean, and Black diaspora literary studies, focuses on Black women writers' conceptions of history. Specializing in the cultural, revolutionary, and intellectual histories of the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds, Matthew is especially curious about how Black radical traditions are translated and received across Afro-Arab, Afro-Asian, and Afro-Indigenous cultural circuits.

Matthew graduated from McGill University in 2024, where he wrote his honours theses on Toni Morrison and Dionne Brand's aesthetics of self-determination and race, sexuality, and citizenship in Black Canadian HIV/AIDS organizing.

Across academia, activism, and journalism, Matthew tells stories about freedom dreamers and struggles for justice. For his commentary and reporting on how slavery, colonialism, and protest inform the present he has been interviewed by the CBC, CTV, CKUT, CJAD, and The Maple. His writing appears or is forthcoming in Canadian Dimension, Cultural Critique Online, and The Local.

Cohort