Lives and works in New York, NY
Born in London, UK
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Yale University
M.Phil., Yale University
M.A., Yale University
A.B., Princeton University
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Associate Professor, Hunter College, CUNY (2023-present)
Assistant Professor, Cornell University (2018-2023)
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Johns Hopkins University (2022)
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Leiden University, Netherlands (2019)
Postdoctoral Research Associate, New York University (2016-2018)
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton University (2015-2016)
SERVICE
Creative Technology Labs Founded
Executive Director, Afro-Asia Group
Co-Founder, a Mellon Foundation initiative for Black feminist technologies
Publishing and Editorial Positions
Editor, Public Books, Global Black History and Theory
Editorial Board, Trans Asia Photography Journal (Duke University Press)
Editorial Board, Refract: A Visual Studies Journal (UC, Santa Cruz)
Editorial Board, Regenerations: A Climate Journal (Rutgers)
National, Executive and Advisory Boards + Elected Positions
Boys Club of New York, Professional Advisory Council
Board Member, National Board of Directors, Association of Asian American Yale Alumni (AAAYA)
Finance Committee, Executive Board, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)
Executive Committee, Visual Cultures, Modern Language Association (MLA)
Nominating Committee, American Studies Association (ASA)
Member, Linnaean Society
Awards
Artist-in-Residence, Columbia University Climate School, 2022-2024.
Outstanding Article Prize of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, for “Sugarwork: The Gastropoetics of Afro-Asia After the Plantation,” 2021.
Toni Cade Bambara Best Article Prize, Black Women’s Studies Association, for “Chop Suey Surplus: Chinese Food, Sex, and the Political Economy of Afro-Asia,” 2021.
Artist-in-Residence, University of Connecticut, Fall 2021.
Fermentologist-in-Residence, University of California, San Diego, 2021-2022.
Grants
Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, January 2023.
Botanical Storytelling, Columbia University World Projects, Project Team, 2022-2024 ($50,000)
Mellon Foundation, Higher Learning, Humanities Grant ($2 million)
National Endowment for the Humanities / AHRC, New Directions ($100,000)
IAAS Fellowship, Leiden University, Netherlands
Radical Collaboration, CIVIC, Cornell University ($20,000)
Classroom Technology Grant, Center for Teaching Innovation Cornell University ($1,500)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for Caribbean Digital Humanities, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
C.V. Starr Research Travel Grant, Suriname, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition Graduate Fellowship, Travel Grant, Yale University
A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University
COURSES
Cornell University
Black and Indigenous Metropolitan Ecologies (Architecture)
sound x color: electronic music and technologies of empire (Cornell Tech)
The Politics and Ethics of Citation
Afro-Asia: Food, Futurism, and Feminisms
Archipelagoes: Cartographies of Race, Sound, and Sexuality
New York University, Faculty Teaching Fellowship
Chinatown: Havana, Kingston, NYC
The Darker Nations: Afro-Asian Cultures
20th/21st Century African American Literature
Caribbean Writing, Reggae, and Routes
Princeton University
Islands in the Sun: Caribbean Literature
Hunter College, CUNY
African Caribbean Literature
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Not Another Lab: The Forever Crisis of Collaboration in the Humanities” ASAP/Journal, May 2023,
“Dirge: Black and Indigenous Hemispheric Burial, a Sound Sculpture,” ASAP / Journal, 2022.
“I’m New Here: Black and Indigenous Media Ecologies,” Refract: A Visual Studies Journal.
“Unmapping the Caribbean: Toward a Digital Praxis of Archipelagic Sounding,” archipelagoes, Small Axe, December 2020.
“Bigger than the Sound: Jamaican Chinese Infrastructure of Reggae," Small Axe, November 2020.
“Intimate Occupations: The Afterlife of the ‘Coolie’” Transforming Anthropology, 22 (1), 2014.
ESSAYS, CHAPTERS, ART CRITICISM
“Doth Suffer A Sea Change: The Underwater Ecologies of Transatlantic Witness,” Interspecies: A Primer, 2024. (forthcoming).
“Black Geological Thought, ”Black Environmentalisms, Duke University Press, 2024, (forthcoming).
“Sound as Method in Caribbean Geography,” Black Island Geographies, Routledge, 2024. (forthcoming).
“Afro-Asian Feminist Art: Futurist Genealogies,” Asia Art Archive, October 2022.
“Silence as Fermentation: Listening Underwater,” Shift Space, (March 2022).
“Human Resources: Art’s History and the Ecology of Black Extraction,” British Art Studies, Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre, November 30, 2020
Global Debt Syllabus, “Debt Peonage and Prisons,” Contributor, Columbia University, 2020.
Review of Wildlife of the Caribbean, Caribbean Quarterly, March 2018.
Biography entry, “Albert Chong,” Dictionary of Afro-Caribbean and Latin American Biography, Oxford University Press, 2016.
“Thrice Diasporized: Caribbean Chinese Diasporic Literature” Small Axe Salon, March 2014.
JOURNALISM
“To Read bell hooks is Love Her,” Vulture, New York Magazine, December 17, 2021.
Re-reading bell hooks as a ritual of radical mourning, gal-dem, December 18, 2021.
“Lauryn Hill: A Draft for Revolution,” The Funambulist, September 3, 2021.
“The DJ is a Time Machine,” Public Books, October 29, 2020.
“Kitchen Marronage and Jerk in Jamaica,” The Funambulist, September 3, 2020.
“Identity, Islands, and Hazel V. Carby: A Mixtape,” Public Books, February 3, 2020.
“The Precarity of Black Motherhood,” Boston Review, August 9, 2019.
"Black Head of Merrill Lynch Forced to Resign," Afro, November 8, 2007.
BOOKS
BOOKS
For more on Tao’s forthcoming books DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday, Penguin Books UK, January 2025) and BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT see the Books section of this website. Below click for links to book featuring chapters and recipes by Dr. Goffe.
