RESEARCH

I research Black women’s expressive culture and performance, mostly in the 20th and 21st centuries in the U.S., on the continent, and in African diasporic contexts. My most significant scholarly contributions concern Black women’s history, humor, and the politics of self-expression.

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Two of the major intellectual and political goals of my work are to offer both an extensive archive of Black women’s humor, and to attend to the seriousness of it as a practice and site of a liberatory politics. As I continue researching and writing in the fields of Black women’s performance and critical humor studies, I aim to showcase and analyze a highly varied archive of Black women’s humor, appreciating its content, aesthetics, audiences, and politics.