Zubaida Bello

Fulbright/University of Strathclyde Award

Standing at the intersections of Africana Studies, History, and Literature, Zubaida explores literature in the African Diaspora, investigating how Black writers conveyed their culture and reclaimed subjectivity in times of displacement. As a James Baldwin Scholar at Hampshire College, Zubaida studied Black Feminist Literature in mainstream feminist movements. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at Wesleyan University, Zubaida examined how freed slaves asserted their subjectivity through captivity narratives.

At the University of Strathclyde, Zubaida will join the Historical Studies MSc program, where she’ll study how the UK travels and travel writings of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells influenced the international abolition and anti-lynching movements. Zubaida hopes this research on Douglass and Wells’ travel writing, contextualized within modern transatlantic Black travel writing, can illuminate how Black communities in the African diaspora have crafted cross-cultural relationships through travel and how we can use travel narratives to continue building cross-cultural connections.

When she isn’t studying literature, Zubaida loves to write her own poetry and prose. Former 2019 New York City Youth Poetry Slam Team member and author of How to Stop the Burning, Zubaida is a multi-disciplinary poet who seeks to blend her academic interests with creative mediums. Zubaida has performed at The Apollo Theater, The United Nations, The Teen Vogue Summit, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, and more. While in Scotland, Zubaida will take inspiration from her research project and write her own travel literature.