Dr. Bain’s most pressing and urgent scholarly and critical-creative pursuits have consolidated around the history, theory, and philosophy of the African diaspora, race, gender, environmental and medical racism, the Anthropocene, and Black arts and letters.

She is currently working on two scholarly monographs. The first, entitled On Black Breath, traces a genealogy of breathing and Blackness in the United States. Her second book, Dirt: Soil and Other Dark Matter, digs into soil for understanding how Blackness has shaped global considerations of the Anthropocene and refused the extractive relations of racial capitalism.

Dr. Bain regularly teaches survey and specialized courses on 19th century through contemporary Black and American arts and cultures, literary and critical theory, and Black feminist and queer thought.

She joins UBC from Tufts University, where she was the John Holmes Assistant Professor in the Humanities.