Sarah Soanirina Ohmer

Faculty Fellow

Sarah Soanirina Ohmer joined the LALPRS department at Lehman College as Assistant Professor and Fulbright Scholar in Fall 2015. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Indianapolis (2011-2015). She received her Ph.D. in Latin American Culture and Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, with a concentration in Cultural Studies and Doctoral Certificate in Latin American Studies (2012). Dr Ohmer specializes in gender and race in Latin American literature and society, cultural theory, postcolonialism, and trauma.  This year, she joined the Editorial Board of the Women’s Studies Quarterly Editorial Board. Dr Ohmer’s research focuses on the intersection of gender, race and trauma in literature by Black Women from Cuba, Brazil, and the US African American and Afro-Latino women. Her interdisciplinary training includes trauma studies, critical ethnic studies, literary analysis and cultural studies.Sarah Soanirina Ohmer is Franco-Malagasy, born in France with roots in Madagascar. She speaks French, English, Spanish and Portuguese. The Fulbright Fellowship enabled her to work on her book manuscript, Keloids of Modernity: Trauma, Race and Gender in Black Women’s Literature. Dr. Ohmer dedicates her work to bridging the personal with the theoretical, in her research, classroom and in life!


Collected Work


The Keloids We Heal: Trauma, Spirituality, and Black Modernity in Literature

Drawing on intersectional analysis, this book focuses on portrayals of trauma and spirituality in works by Toni Morrison, Conceição Evaristo, Maryse Condé, Gloria Anzaldúa, the Quilombhoje poets, and María de los Reyes Castillo. Ohmer compares literature from different countries along four thematic pathways: ghosts, mirrors, naming, and motherhood. Her analysis unlocks the literature’s power to heal through gut-wrenching descriptions of wounds and thrilling passages of hope and liberation. Throughout, Ohmer weaves in her life story as a Black woman as she reflects on how colonialism, racism, sexism, and capitalism have impacted her work, traumas, and faith journey.




Participating Years


2017–2018

Consciousness and Revolution II

The place of consciousness in radical theory and practice is a subject of significant dispute, as global and local events continue to underline.