I am a cultural critic and historian who writes about legacies of colonialism, postcolonialism, and empire in the Atlantic world. My scholarship investigates an array of cultural strategies, especially lens and time-based media such as photography, film, video, performance, and music. While I focus on modernist/contemporary practice, my projects argue that these categories are provisional rhetorics constituted by deeper transnational histories.
Such research is reflected in courses that survey global modernism, aesthetic philosophy, and photographic history, as well as thematic seminars on American identity, the Black Atlantic, criticism/critical theory, diasporic and global southern networks, and an intensive summer program in South Africa that I cofounded in 2014. Since 2023 I have been a program faculty member in Film and Media Studies at Georgetown.
My writing appears in a range of scholarly, industry, and popular formats, including leading publications where I have been an editor or regular contributor, such as frieze, Artforum International, and Aperture. I am an alum of the Critical Studies program at the Whitney ISP and before joining the College of Arts and Sciences, I taught at the University of Chicago, SAIC, the University of Illinois, and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Secondary
- Department Chair, College - Department of Art & Art History