Sydney F Lewis

Sydney F. Lewis Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. An interdisciplinary scholar and educator, her work focuses on Black feminist thought and culture, Black queer and femme studies, gender performance, and Fat Studies.

Lewis’s scholarship brings Black feminist theory, cultural studies, and queer theory into conversation with African-American literature and popular culture. Her dissertation, Looking Forward to the Past: Queering Black Female Sexuality in “Neo” Cultural Productions, examines how Black women represent and articulate nonheteronormative sexualities beyond the frameworks of predominantly white LGBTQ scholarship. Her current body of work explores Black femme embodiment, the liberatory possibilities of the erotic, Fatness in art and culture, and the relationships among mental health, institutional harm, and trauma-informed pedagogy.

Lewis teaches courses on feminist and queer theory, embodiment, Blackness in contemporary horror, Fat Studies, and feminist theory in burlesque and drag performance. Grounded in empathy and a humanistic approach, her teaching blurs the boundaries between scholarship, art, and activism while inviting students to understand the classroom as a space for critical inquiry, creative expression, and collective transformation.

A Baltimore-area native, Lewis earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington, her M.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness program, and her B.A. in English and Psychology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Honors College.