☆ BIOgraphy ☆

C.G. Branch is a PhD student in American Studies at Boston University. Their interdisciplinary scholarship interrogates the politics of sensuality as a site of cultural production, bodily governance, and affective resistance within the context of the American empire. Drawing on critical race theory, feminist and queer thought, performance studies, and disability studies, C.G.’s work explores how sensuality functions as both a mode of state regulation and a terrain for insurgent world-making.

Before coming to Boston, C.G. earned their Bachelor’s degrees in American Studies and English from the University of California, Berkeley, where they received the Departmental Citation for academic excellence in Americanist scholarship. Their undergraduate research focused on representations of sex work in Cold War cinema, exploring the entanglements of erotic labor, national identity, and cinematic spectacle during a period of intensified cultural containment.

As a nontraditional student, C.G. began their academic journey at Orange Coast College, a community college in Southern California. That formative experience continues to shape their educational and pedagogical commitments, grounding their work in the values of accessibility, public education, and the radical potential of non-elite, anti-hegemonic intellectual spaces.

As an instructor, C.G. teaches with a commitment to radical liberation and abolitionist practice. Their classrooms are collaborative spaces rooted in mutual accountability, care, and critical inquiry. Guided by the principles of student empowerment and collective learning, C.G. invites students to interrogate how knowledge is produced, circulated, and challenged—especially within institutions of power. Presently, they teach as a Teaching Fellow at Boston University in addition to their role as an ESOL teacher at Rosie’s Place, a women’s shelter in Boston.