Sarah Ohmer

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Sarah Soanirina Ohmer is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. Her research is on Afro-Latin American Literature and pedagogy in universities that serve Hispanic and African American students. Professor Ohmer’s book, The Keloids We Heal: Trauma, Spirituality, and Black Modernity in Literature (U Illinois press 2025) analyzes 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, to argue how corporeal and spiritual healing in literature by women of colors can be seen to redefine modern thought and printed text. Her next project focuses on 21st century poetry and activism by Black women grounded in Africana Diasporic religious principles, specifically in Sao Paulo Brazil, and Cali, Colombia. In 2022, she co-edited “AfroDiasporic Protest,” focused on Black women’s activism in Colombia, for the Publication of Afro-Latin American Research Association (PALARA), a highly regarded journal in Afro-Latin American Studies. In 2021 she co-edited “Solidão,” the first bilingual Portuguese/English special issue for Women’s Studies Quarterly Journal (WSQ), a leading academic journal in Gender Studies. 

Dr. Ohmer was awarded an NEH Humanities Initiatives Award for Hispanic-Serving Institutions grant (2025), a CUNY-BRESI campus climate grant (2021), and two U.S. Fulbright Fellowships (Brazil 2014, Colombia 2021). Since 2021, she focuses on collaborations with emerging scholars, and BIPOC faculty across the college, to reflect on campus climate, pedagogy, and to diversify the fields of Afro-Latin American Studies, Gender Studies, and Writing Across the Curriculum. Her grant work and special issues editing work illustrates these collaborations. The NEH grant is a collective project within the Lehman CUNY WAC program, and the CUNY-BRESI grant funded a collective project with Evelyn Duran-Urrea in Languages and Literatures, and Mary Phillips in Africana Studies. She has published peer-reviewed articles in English and in Portuguese for Feminist Formations, Revista Docência e Cibercultura, the Journal of International Women's Studies, Publication of Afro-Latin American Research Association, InterFACES, Evoke: Africana Dance Studies Journal, Confluencia, and the Zora Neale Hurston Forum. She now serves on editorial boards for the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP), and the Publication for Afro-Latin American Research Association (PALARA), and on the CUNY Futures Initiative Advisory Board.  

Professor Ohmer has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A. in Spanish and a B.A. in English Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Houston. Before arriving at Lehman College, she taught and coordinated the Spanish Program at the University of Indianapolis. 

Grants 

• 2025-25 $150,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Initiatives Award for Hispanic-Serving Institutions. “Students Archive the Bronx: Building Literacy for Multilingual Learners through Community History Projects.” Co-PIs Jane Kehoe-Higgins and Sophia Hsu.  

• 2022-23. $15,000. CUNY BRESI - Campus Climate. Addressing Racism on Campus with Restorative Practices. PI Evelyn Durán, Co-PI Mary Frances Phillips. 

• 2020-21 $26,000. Fulbright U.S. Scholar Colombia. “Witnessing Black Women's Traumas and Healing: How Ritual and Creativity-Based Activism Heals (Post)War Traumas in the Chontaduro Cultural House in Cali, Colombia (1986 -2021).” Research/Teaching. Fellow ICESI University Center for African Diaspora Studies. Cali, Colombia. 

• 2020-21 $11,534.50. Cycle 51 PSC-CUNY Enhanced Grant. July 2020-March 30 2021 “Spiritual Healing: How Black Women’s Literature Heals Trauma in 21st Century São Paulo.” 

• 2014-15 $38,000. Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Humanities, Brazil. “Witnessing Black Women’s Traumas: Ritual and Creativity-Based Activism in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.” Research Fellow, Center for Diversity and Human Rights. São Paulo, Brazil. 

Selected Publications  

• 2025. The Keloids We Heal: Trauma, Spirituality, and Black Modernity in American Literature. U of Illinois Press, Transformations Series. Series Editor, AnaLouise Keating. Acquisitions Editor, Dominique Moore. 

• 2022. Vergara Figueroa, A., Ohmer S., and García, M., co-eds. Afro-Diasporic Protest. Special issue for PALARA. No 26 (2022) Fall.  

• 2021. Saunders, T., Ohmer S., and Silva, L., co-eds. Solidão. Special Issue for Women’s Studies Quarterly. Vol 49: Fall/Winter 2021.  

• 2024. Guess, A., & Ohmer, S. “Reappraising Land and Inheritance, Revisiting Ghosts: A Black Feminist And Decolonial Land-informed Reading Of Beloved by Toni Morrison And I, Tituba, Black Witch Of Salem by Maryse Condé.” Feminist Formations, Vol. 36. No. 1. Spring. 27–56. 

• 2023. Ohmer, S. “La palabra que salva y quiebra epistemes occidentales: sanación individual-colectiva y escrita-oral-ritual en Ecos, palabras de mujeres.” Silencios que matan. Narrativas de la violencia sexual en cuerpos racializados. Katherine Arboleda, ed. Cali: Universidad Icesi, 2023.  

• 2019. Ohmer, S. “Afro-Latin American Documentary Resistance from the Pacific Coast” PALARA, Issue 23. Fall. 49-58. 

• 2019. Ohmer, S. “The Making and Silencing of “Axé-Ocracy” in Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political & Literary Movement in São Paulo” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol 20. 40-63.