Johannah King-Slutzky biography: 13 things about Columbia University instructor

Johannah Sarah King-Slutzky is a Ph.D. student and instructor at Columbia University in New York City, New York, United States. Her research interests include science, literature, Marxism, Romanticism, transcendentalism, ecocriticism, environmental humanities and 18th and 19th century poetics.

Before entering Columbia University, King-Slutzky worked as a political strategist for several leftist and progressive causes, including for the consulting firm BerlinRosen in New York City. Her dissertation at the university is on fantasies of limitless energy in the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1960.

“My goal is to write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism,” King-Slutzky explained. “I am particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination.”

Who is Johannah King-Slutzky?

King-Slutzky is a resident of Harlem, New York City. She previously lived in Chicago, Illinois, USA and Houston, Texas, USA.

At Columbia University, King-Slutzky taught university writing and literary texts and criticism methods in Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Here are 13 more things about her:

1. From September 2008 to June 2012, she attended the University of Chicago in Chicago where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English language and literature. In November 2009, she joined Twitter. She used a photo of Better Buds products as her cover photo.
2. From September 2012 to December 2015, she wrote for The New Republic, The Awl, Gawker, Baffler Magazine and Vice in New York.
3. On June 29, 2013, she took to Instagram to share a photo of a crowd with a caption “Dyke march thru midtown, nyc”. On August 1, 2013, she attended the “Breaking Bad” screener at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Anna Gunn, RJ Mitte and Bob Odenkirk were at the panel. On September 4, 2013, she obtained her New York Public Library card.
4. On November 8, 2014, she attended the Bot Summit 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA where she presented a speech titled “Bot Culture and the Myth of the Wacky Inventor”.
5. From July 2015 to March 2017, she was a Tumblr director at Refinery29 in New York.
6. From August 2017 to October 2019, she was a BerlinRosen senior account executive.
7. In September 2019, she entered Columbia University as a part-time instructor pursuing a PhD in English and comparative literature. From October 2019 to October 2020, she was a digital director at Arena in New York.
8. In September 2020, she became a freelance digital strategist.
9. In December 2021, when she and more than 3,000 other student workers were striking at Columbia University, she told Democracy Now!, “We have very basic demands. We have a lower income compared to cost of living than any peer institution.”
10. In 2022, she became a United Auto Workers steward.
11. In October 2023, she turned 33.
12. On January 24, 2024, she was one of the United Auto Workers members who interrupted Joe Biden while he was speaking at the union’s national community action program conference in Washington, D.C., USA.
13. On April 17, 2024, she and other pro-Palestinian supporters started a protest at Columbia University and illegally occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall. On April 30, 2024, she told reporters outside the hall, “Like, could people please have a glass of water? Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic, I mean, it’s crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus but this is like basic humanitarian aid we’re asking for.”