teddy lance, ph.d.

hello!

i'm a part-time professor of English, poet, and organizer for trans poetry in Huichin, the unceded ancestral land of the Lisjan (Ohlone) people.

research: i study the intersection of racial capitalism, coloniality and humanism through U.S. performance cultures. i'm currently working on a manuscript, based on my dissertation, that tells a cultural history of liberal human whiteness through the study of American Shakespeare performances in the late 19th and early 20th century and their intersection with ideas of civilization, progress, and a racialized "savagery." related research interests include how Black American literature and performance counter these constructions, settler colonialism, queer and trans poetics, and liberal humanism in the domain of prison education.

poetry: i'm a proud member of Oakland's Trans Poetry Workshop and contributing editor of the recent anthology Distilled Devotion (2025). Other work has been published in Shelf Magazine (no. 1; 2025) and TurkxTaylor’s 2025 Trans Day of Visibility poetry zine, which i co-edited and organized with TxT buds.<3