Sabrina Sadique
English Department Head and Teacher
Sabrina came to Yale from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to study chemistry, but a course on Urdu poets and their influence in English Romantic poetry with Professor Sara Suleri altered her disciplinary trajectory to English Literature.
She completed both her bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees in English at Yale and Harvard respectively. At Harvard, Sabrina’s doctoral work paid particular attention to postcolonial theory, criticism, and literature. She was awarded the Francis James Child Prize for excellence in teaching English concentrators and nominated for the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching by the Harvard Undergraduate Council. Sabrina’s teaching has also been recognized by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning for its contribution to the education of students in Harvard College. Prior to her work with boarding students at Concord Academy, Sabrina’s experiences in residential life included directing the welfare of students as Assistant Dean of the General Program of Harvard Summer Programs and Resident Tutor in English and Race Relations at Dunster House.
Sabrina joined the English Department at Concord Academy in 2016 and has since taught electives on the Bible, British Romantic poetry, South Asian diaspora, gender and nationalism, and feminist experimental literature. Chair of the English Department, Sabrina has designed and taught interdisciplinary courses that pair ancient and contemporary literature as dialectical inquiries within the historical consciousness that simultaneously mirror, inform, influence, and interrogate one another. She encourages her students to hone a counter-taxonomic capability through literary analysis, a method of looking into character and text dynamics that recognizes socialized perceptions and resists the instinct to order heterogeneous, lived experiences into homogeneous categories. Sabrina co-authored Concord Academy’s mission statement, served on the Strategic Planning & Implementation Committee and Head of School Search Committee, and was a Wilcox Program mentor, an admissions interviewer, and a member of the Sustainability Planning Committee for CA@100. In 2023, Sabrina gave the faculty address at the installation of Concord Academy’s 11th head of school. Sabrina has served the school’s residential program as the lead house faculty at Wheeler House and as an affiliate of Hobson and Admadjaja houses. She is going into her seventh year within the boarding community.
When she is not teaching, Sabrina may be found working on her manuscript After Grace (a collection of Sufi poetry and meditations), cooking Bengali food, tending to plants, cultivating her meditation practice, or studying the works of Hilma af Klint. When asked about the source of her greatest joy at CA, the answer is consistently, “Being in the classroom with my students.”
