Overview
I am broadly interested in the intersection of political, social, and artistic radicalism, with a particular investment in African-American political radicalism in relation to African-American aesthetic movements. Manifestations of this encounter include the intersection between the Black Power movement and African-American independent film of the '70s and, more broadly, the ways in which black intellectuals have questioned forms of knowing through not only writing about but participating in artistic projects, be it through painting, writing novels, composing music, or engaging in cinematic production. I am also interested in overlaps and disjunctures in concepts of narrativization in the fields of history and art, as well questions of historical memory and how the broader principles of liberalism inform and often demarcate the boundaries of sight, sound, and mind. I would like to research how African-American artists and thinkers have – both politically and aesthetically – interrogated questions of historical agency – as well as historical time and historical self – in ways that are not always tethered to liberal questions of cause and effect.
Advisor: Kevin Gaines, Penny Von Eschen
