Email: jaburrel@uci.edu
Jocelyn’s research mobilizes questions raised by the end of race and other ostensibly intractable systems of cultural, political, and psychic organization. She is primarily concerned with the psychic and affective pedagogies instrumentalized, both consciously and unconsciously, in the construction and regeneration of violent human sorting systems, and the counter-pedagogies developed across various modalities that together might form a teachable ethos of resistance and social transformation. The speculative method of her work draws from both creative and theoretical frameworks, including playwriting and performance studies, affect theory, black feminist thought, gender and sexuality studies, critical theory, and media studies. A former editor and publisher, Jocelyn earned a BA in Ethnic Studies at Brown University.
Email: lrcarter@uci.edu
LaShonda’s research is concerned with manifestations and the accrual of violence against black bodies as a result of institutional and systemic anti-black racism. She also researches the different modes of personal and political survival they develop in an attempt to respond to living in conditions of continuous incredible violence. She holds a BA in African American Studies and in English from the University of California at Irvine.
Email: rcherian@uci.edu
Roy Cherian's research traces the emergence of race and the biomedical with regard to the historico-material and psycho-political dimensions of colonialization and enslavement. More precisely, by interrogating the relationship between anti-blackness and the secular, Roy's research poses the question of how Black flesh functions as an essential site for the production and refinement of knowledge and the praxis critical to the functioning of biopolitical states and the self-fashioning of its secular citizens and subjects.
Email: ericamc1@uci.edu
Erica's interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of food as a racialized and gendered text, identity formation, critical landscapes, and cyberspace. As such, her current research looks at the discursive construction of Asian American racialized and hypermasculine identities within the popular culinary industry and narratives about food, eating, and cooking. Her larger project is interested in analyzing the production and consumption of food as performative self-making within the “global city” of Los Angeles.
Email: dldumas@uci.edu
DeShawn's research centers whiteness as a militarized socio-economic order and psychodermatological frame for constructions of personhood and subjective experience. His interests include aesthetics, political ontology, climate ecology and the future of policing.
A contemporary conceptual painter and Visiting Faculty at San Francisco Art Institute, He received a Master of Arts degree in Fine Art and the History of Art and Design from the Pratt Institute.
Email: cejeffri@uci.edu
Chasia's research looks at ideas of knowledge production, community, embodiment, resistance, and credibility amongst Black women, primarily using Black Feminist Theory, dis/ability theory, poetic theory, and affect theory.
Chasia received her B.A. in Law, History, & Culture with a minor in Gender & Social Justice from the University of Southern California where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. At UCI, she is also a student in the Feminist Studies Graduate Emphasis.
Email: sskhalil@uci.edu
Samiha's research examines racial slavery in the Arab world, Arab subject-formation and its convergences with constructions of race. This work employs critical race theory, black studies, philosophy, postcolonial theory, and textual analysis of historical Arabic texts. It aims to create new methodological approaches to studying the transmutations of racial regimes in the Arab World and on a global scale. Samiha’s formal training in architecture and critical geography informs her other research interests, which extend to the intersections of architecture and psychoanalysis, space/body relations in colonial cities, and her previous work on racialized urban governance and its spatial manifestations in urban settings.
Email: rkirtong@uci.edu
Ronnese’s research concerns the long-lasting consequences of chattel slavery literacy laws and the ways in which they materialize in contemporary composition pedagogy. More specifically, her work draws critical attention to how academic language norms disadvantage Blacks students and Black vernacular knowledge, contributing to anti-Blackness in the classroom. This work employs composition theory and pedagogy, critical race theory, Black studies, literature and culture, and critical university studies. Engaging theories of racial passing, decolonization, and critical pedagogy, Ronnese’s work aims to project alternatives to anti-Blackness in educational spaces. She holds a BA and MA in Literature from California State University, Los Angeles.
Email: tmcdouga@uci.edu
Taija’s research positions the question of time in relation to both finance capitalism and blackness. Through readings of Black autobiography, Black Critical Theory, psychoanalysis and political economy, her work considers the role of time-telling, time-keeping, clockwork, and financial instruments as a means and method of grasping the tenses and times of Blackness, the Black being, and temporality. Her work has appeared in liquid blackness, Anthurium, and Décalages.
Email: mariel.rowland@uci.edu
Mariel’s research centers radical Black womxn educators. She studies the lives and pedagogical work of womxn who have made space in educational systems where there seemingly was none. Tracing their different methods of rupture, Mariel considers the ways in which Black feminist pedagogy moves across time and space, and in between people. With a background in art museum education, Mariel’s own practice as an educator informs her research.
Email: smileyb@uci.edu
Brie’s research seeks provocations to the questions of ontology, madness, and deviance. Using psychoanalysis, Black Critical Theory, memoir, and Black queer theory, Brie’s work constantly seeks to use slavery as a theoretic for the past, present and future of Black positionality in the world. Brie is also interested in the fallacies of multiculturalism, reform, and representation and their wider connections to antiblackness. Additionally, Brie seeks to research Brazilian archives and American archives of slavery and law, as well as the stratification of Blackness between the United States and Latin America. They received their Master’s in Women’s Studies and Bachelor’s in African American Studies from the University of Alabama.
Isabelle Williams
Email: icwilli1@uci.edu
Isabelle's research repositions the blackface minstrel as an active and present monster. Her work is concerned with how the body is formed and reformed especially through play in horror video games. Using psychoanalysis, political economy, Black Critical Theory, film theory, and phenomenology as her framework, her research questions the status of the body, specifically the black body, within categories of family friendly entertainment. She received her Master's in Film and Media Studies from Chapman University.
Konysha Wade
Email: konyshaw@uci.edu
Konysha’s research interests include an intersection of Black Studies and Black Theology; the oral histories of the Black church being her primary concern. Konysha also studies Black energy transferability and what it means to exist in oneness through shared experiences.