Hi, my name is Tamar Sella and I am a writer, scholar, and teacher deeply invested in diasporic subjectivities, ancestral memories, art, and social justice. I primarily write about contemporary Mizrahi and Arab Jewish cultural production towards unpacking colonial and racial logics in Israel/Palestine. In my commitment to traditions of feminist diasporic ethnography, alongside the performers, I write about my own Jewish family history, and particularly the occluded story of my maternal grandmother who had emigrated from Yemen.
I am currently an assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the College of Music at the University of North Texas, where I teach courses on ethnomusicology, African American music, and music and diaspora. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Jewish Studies program at Rice University, and I received my PhD from the music department at Harvard University.