Black Studies

Welcome

Our students and faculty members work in close collaboration with other departments to study African American, African, and African diaspora literature and media, as well as in the histories of political struggle, collective action, and protest that Black, Indigenous and other racialized peoples have pursued, both here in the United States and in solidarity with international movements.

Our commitment is not just to ideas in the abstract, but also to activating histories of engaged art, debate, struggle, collective action, and counterrevolution as contexts for the emergence of ideas and narratives.

Note: For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies. We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods. To learn more, please read this interview with Adrienne Brown and C. Riley Snorton conducted by Ph.D. candidate Joel Rhone here.

Workshops, Working Groups, Projects, and Centers

Below is a growing list of groups where our students and faculty are involved. 

Reproductions of Race and Racial Ideologies 20th/21st Century
African Studies Digital Media
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Gender and Sexuality Studies
Latin America and the Caribbean Poetry and Poetics
Religions in America Theater and Performance Studies
Slavery and Visual Culture Working Group Mass Incarceration Working Group
Race and Capitalism Project Neubauer Collegium Faculty Projects
For full list of current graduate workshops, click here  

 

Faculty Members

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Sophia Azeb

Research Interests: African American Literature and Black studies, Postcolonial/Decolonial, Cultural Studies, Translation, Theories of Diaspora and Decolonization, and Global Anglophone
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Lauren Berlant

Research Interests: Cultural Studies | Critical Theory | Historicism| Psychoanalysis| Aesthetics of the Case and the Exemplum | Theory and History of Citizenship, Decolonization, Migration | African American Literature and Black Studies | 19th/20th C American Literature
Adrienne Brown

Adrienne Brown

Research Interests: Critical Race Studies, Cultural Studies, Historicism (Old and New), African American Literature, Twentieth-Century American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Literature and the Arts, The Novel, Urban Studies
Bill Brown

Bill Brown

Research Interests: Marxism|Cinema Studies|History of Literary Criticism|Literature and the Arts|The Novel|Urban Studies|Visual Culture and Iconography
Rachel Galvin

Rachel Galvin

Research Interests: Theories of Diaspora and Decolonization |AmericanLatino Literature| Twentieth-Century American Literature| Contemporary Literature | European Modernism| Literary History| Literature and the Arts| Poetry and Poetics| Translation
Edgar Garcia

Edgar Garcia

Research Interests: Critical Race Studies| Marxism| Psychoanalysis|Theories of Diaspora and Decolonization |Contemporary Literature| Animal Studies | Literature and the Arts | Translation |Visual Culture and Iconography
Loren Kruger

Loren Kruger

Research Interests: Critical Theory | Theories of Diaspora and Decolonization | African Literature in English | Drama and Performance in Africa, the Americas, and Western Europe | Modern Drama and Performance | Translation | Urban Studies
Noémie Ndiaye

Noémie Ndiaye

Research Interests: Renaissance Literature | Critical Race Studies | Performance studies | Comparative Literature | Translation | Cultural Studies | Gender and Sexuality
C. Riley Snorton

C. Riley Snorton

Research Interests: Black Studies | Gender and Sexuality Studies | Critical Race Studies| Cultural Studies | Visual Culture and Iconography
Sonali Thakkar

Sonali Thakkar

Research Interests: Critical Race Studies|Cultural Studies|Gender and Sexuality|Theories of Diaspora and Decolonization|Colonial and Postcolonial Literature|20th C British Literature|Contemporary Literature|Law and Literature|Political Theory|The Novel