Cohort Year:
2021
Research Interests:
Media studies; African-American Literature and Culture; Black Feminist Theory; Gender & Sexuality; Aesthetics; Affect Studies
Education:
BA, University of Michigan, 2019; MA, University of Michigan, 2020
Biography
My dissertation focuses on the media aesthetics and style of various identitarian political movements of the late 20th century, including Black Power, Afrocentrism, lesbian separatism, post-70s Butch/Femme, and Riot Grrrl. I am interested in the role that the circulation of aesthetics and style—channeled through media objects—played in mediating, consolidating, and negotiating group identity within these movements, as well as the psychic processes through which individuals internalize objects and come to see them as extensions of their own subjectivity. Outside of my academic life, I work in community arts programming and film production, and I am a substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools.