Academic Positions
2021- Present
Assistant Professor of African Diasporic Art
Department of Art History & the Center for African & African American Studies
Rice University, Houston, Texas
2020-2021
The University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of African American Studies
The University of California, Los Angeles
Mentor: Uri McMillan
Education
2020 Doctor of Philosophy in African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender & Sexuality
Dissertation Committee: Brandi Wilkins Catanese (Advisor), Darieck Scott, Leigh Raiford, Julia Bryan-Wilson
2015 Master of Arts in African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
2010 Bachelor of Arts, African American Studies and Sociology, Emory University
Awards and Honors
Predoctoral
2017 Louise Patterson Mentorship Award, The University of California, Berkeley
2015 Student Essay Contest Award Recipient, National Council for Black Studies
2015 M.A. with distinction, The University of California, Berkeley
2014 Predoctoral Fellowship Special Recognition, Ford Foundation Fellowship Program
2010 B.A. magna cum laude, Emory University
2010 Who’s Who among Students in American Colleges and University, Emory University
Grants and Fellowships
Predoctoral
2020 Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Inaugurate Scholar-in-Residence Program
2019 Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Patricia and Phillip Frost Predoctoral Fellow
2018 Andy Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital, Arts Writers Blog Grant
2018 Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley
2017 VèVè Clark and Alonso Clark Research Travel Grant, University of California, Berkeley
2015 Departmental Funding Award, University of California, Berkeley
Publications: Peer Reviewed Articles
2017 “Retracing the Contours of Her Figure…Slippages Begin to Appear: Reckoning the Limits of the Archive with Senam Okudzeto’s Large Reclining Nude.” Women & Performance: Sentiment & Sentience: Black Performance since Scenes of Subjection. Edited by Sampada Aranke and Nikolas Oscar Sparks. February 2017.
Publications: Art Criticism
2019 “Christina Quarles.” New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. August 2020 – January 2021 Exhibition catalogue. Berkeley, California.
2018 MFA 2018: The 48th Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. 11 May – 17 June 2018 Exhibition catalogue. Berkeley, California.
2018 “Inexhaustible Intimations: An Aesthetic Practice of Metaphorics” Black is a Color. Antenna Gallery. 10 March - 9 April 2018. Exhibition catalogue. New Orleans, Louisiana.
2018 “Resisting Repose in Sam Vernon’s Rage Wave.” Rage Wave. G44: Centre for Contemporary Photography. 12 January 2018- 10, February 2018. Exhibition catalogue. Toronto, Canada.
2017 “Tschabalala Self.” Trigger: Gender As a Tool and a Weapon. New Museum of Contemporary Art. Exhibition catalogue, 27 September 2017- 21 January 2018, New Museum, New York, New York.
Invited Lectures
2021 “Blackness and Breath in the 2011 digital video My dreams, my works must wait till after hell…, by GIRL (Simone Leigh + Chitra Ganesh).” Department of Ethnic Studies, The University of California, Riverside. March 5, 2021.
2021 “How the black body bends: blackness and breath.” The Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance, The University of California, Los Angeles. Performing Resistance Series. February 12, 2021.
Invited Classroom Presentations
2021 “How the black body bends,” The Department of Art History and Archaeology. Critical Colloquium taught by Dr. Janet Kraynak, December 10, 2020.
2021 “Blackness and Breath,” The Department of Art History, Indiana University, Imaging Race: Photography & The Archive taught by Dr. Fay Gleisser, November 2, 2020.
Conferences
2020 “How the Black Body Bends: Sensorial Distortions in Black Contemporary Art.” Lecture presented at: Smithsonian American Art Museum for the annual SAAM Fellows’ Work-in-Progress Lectures. Lecture in Washington, DC. 2020, June 18.
2020 “Distorting Inflections: Proprioception in Senam Okudzeto’s Works-on-Paper.” Paper presented at: 108th CAA Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois. 2020, February 14.
2019 “A Sensorial Distortion: Black Womxn Artists and the Multisensorial.” Paper part of the panel “‘The inchoate precursor of a doing’: Toward Non-Ocularcentric Histories of Blackness” at National Women’s Studies Association: Protest, Justice, and Transnational Organizing in San Francisco, California. 2019, November 16.
2019 “A Sway in Tandem: Sensorial Distortions in Black Feminist Art.” Paper accepted at: The Queer Art of Feeling: Sensation, Emotion and the Body in Queer Cultures at University of Cambridge. Cambridge, United Kingdom. 2019, May 3.
2018 “Eluding Sonic Discernment in Simone Leigh’s After Hell.” Paper presented at: National Women’s Studies Association: Just Imagine. Imagine Justice in Atlanta, Georgia. 2018, November 11.
2018 “A Sway in Tandem: Distortions of Tschabalala Self’s Head Over Heals.” Paper presented at: Black Portraiture[s] IV: The Color of Silence at Harvard University. 2018, March 24. Boston, Massachusetts.
2017 Moderator for “Being In/With Black Art” a panel presented at the St. Clair Drake Research Symposium 2017. Proceedings of: Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. 2017 May 5. Berkeley, California
2015 “Malleable Flesh: Black Female Artists and the Performative Potential of Visual Distortion.” Paper presented at: Black Art United States: Institutions and Interventions. Proceeding of: Black Arts Initiative at Northwestern University. 2015, June 4-6. Evanston, Illinois.
2015 “Intimating Motion: A Mediation of Senam Okudzeto’s All Facts Have Been Changed to Protect the Ignorant.” Paper presented at: St. Clair Drake Research Symposium 2015. Proceedings of: Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. 2015 May 4. Berkeley, California
2015 “All Facts Have Been Changed to Protect the Ignorant: The Illusion of Motion in the Work of Senam Okudzeto.” Paper presented at: Queer Translations/Queer Mobilities. Proceedings of a Speaker Series for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture. 2014 Dec 8. Berkeley, California. November, 2014.
Docents, Invited Lectures and Conversations
2019 “PHONE HOME with Sadie Barnette.” Artist Talk with Sadie Barnette. Museum of African Diaspora. 2 March 2019.
2018 “Christina Quarles.” Public Lecture on Christina Quarles at Berkeley Museum of Art & Public Film Archive. 10 October 2018.
2017 “Making as Research: Artist Talk with DIY Couture Fashion Lab with Angie Wilson.” Berkeley Art + Design. Berkeley, California. November, 2017.
2017 “Tracing the Contours of her Figure.” African American Studies 5B: Life and Culture in the United States. Berkeley, California. March 2017.
2017 Museum Docent. Berkeley Museum of Art & Pacific Film Archive. Sojourner Truth, Photography, and the Flight Against Slavery. 2017 July 27- October 23.
Teaching Experience
University of California, Berkeley: African Diaspora Studies Department
2018 Black Feminist Art: Race, Gender, Sexuality and (Dis)ability in Black Contemporary Art. (Primary Instructor) Fall.
2017 Lives of Struggle: Minorities in Majority Culture (Primary Instructor Prof. Michael Cohen) Fall.
2017 African American Life and Culture in the United States: Migration, Criminal Justice and Policing (Primary Instructor Nikki Jones) Spring.
2016 African American Life and Culture in the United States: The Study of African American Culture through the Humanities (Primary Instructor Prof. Brandi Catanese) Fall.
2016 Communication for Leaders (Primary Instructor Prof. Ericka Lutz) Summer.
2016 African American Life and Culture in the United States (Primary Instructor Prof. James Taylor,) Spring.
2016 Lives of Struggle: Minorities in Majority Culture (Primary Instructor Prof. Michael Cohen) Fall.
2015 Communication for Leaders (Primary Instructor Prof. Ericka Lutz.) Summer.
2014 African American History Before 1865 (Primary Instructor Prof. Ula Taylor) Fall.
2014 Race and American Film (Primary Instructor Michael Cohen) Spring.