While the early 2010s cohort of Mesa High School will tell you I have always been a nerd, I did not begin my formal foray into academia until 2021, when I began coursework for a PhD in Afro-American Studies and a graduate certificate from Feminist Studies in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Below, please find some scholarship and exciting updates to that end. PLEASE.
PUBLISHED WORK
“‘¡¡¡SOY NEGRA!!!’/’i found god in myself’: Shange, Santa Cruz, and Self-Love as Savior” in the Black Theatre Review
This article gets up close to the dramatic poetry of Black Arts dramatist Ntozake Shange and Peruvian performer Victoria Santa Cruz in order to examine the Black Feminist vibrations and diasporic dialogue reverberating between their pieces. By placing for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in dialogue with “Me Gritaron Negra,” I hope to make a case for the centrality of embodied performance to something we may conceive of as the radical politics of self-love.
“‘I Thought I Loved Him, … the Pale Coward’: The Politics of Interracial Love in W.E.B. Du Bois’s ‘Seven-Up’” in Theatre History Studies (Special Edition, “Black Theatre Manifestos”)
Analyzing seven drafts of W.E.B. Du Bois’s unpublished, unperformed play “Seven-Up,” I argue that dramatic writing is a particularly salient way for activists and cultural critics like Du Bois to work out their political musings and make the case for societal shifts. In this case, I compare Du Bois’s nonfiction writings about so-called “anti-miscegenation” laws and the imagined consequence of such laws in the dramatic one-act “Seven-Up.”
AWARDS
“Lorraine Hansberry & the Kitchen(ette) Sink” Runner Up, Cheryl A. Wall Graduate Student Paper Prize, Black Women’s Studies Association
RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS
Schomburg Center, New York Public Library
-influence of Black Arts Movement aesthetics on the 1974 Broadway musical The Wiz
Black Metropolis Research Consortium
-Black Arts Movement dramatists and theatre companies in Chicago
-queer and Black Feminist aesthetics in Chicago’s Black Arts Movement
W.E.B. Du Bois Center
-the unpublished plays of W.E.B. Du Bois
-dramatic writing as a supplement to nonfiction political writing
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“From ‘F*gg*ty White Men’ to ‘Ending Up Funny’: Queering the Drama of the Black Arts Movement” at the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH) Annual Conference, 2024
“‘the black ensemble is a necessity’: Theatre, Chicago, the Black Arts Movement, and Beyond” at the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH) Annual Conference, 2024
“‘¡¡¡SOY NEGRA!!!’/‘I found god in myself’: The Body Politics of Self-Love in Afro-Diasporic Black Feminist Drama Poetry” at the Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, 2024
“The Process Is the Product(ion), or: Collective Leadership Works” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Annual Conference, 2023
…and more!
TEACHING
Goodman Theatre (Chicago)
Introduction to Playwriting, Advanced Playwriting, Storytelling for Senior Citizens
University of Massachusetts Amherst
History of the Civil Rights Movement, Contemporary Playwrights of Color, The Grassroots Experience in American Life & Culture — Can Art Be Activism?, Performing Power, Performing Progress: Race, Gender, & Class Onstage
The Forge Studio (Chicago)
Introduction to Playwriting, Breaking Down the Text: Acting Technique Through Script Analysis
How lucky am I?!
Jennifer Onopa, Tatiana Rodriguez, me with a haircut, and Saharra Dixon presented at the ATHE Conference—and it was incredible!
Look at all these brilliant minds I get to learn from!
Put me and my greasy hair on a college brochure, dang it!
Pictured here: The W.E.B. Du Bois Library, the tallest library in the nation AND the landmark I use to navigate campus.