Short Talks on Big Ideas: Kimberly Juanita Brown on Slavery's Afterlife

Go back to class with Associate Professor Kimberly Juanita Brown as she examines our culture’s perception of Black bodies, imminent death, and the ways these images can cause collective suffering.

Kimberly Juanita Brown’s work focuses on the intersection of African American/Africa diaspora literature and visual culture studies. Through this work, she observes and considers the images our culture creates and how they depict and reflect the black experience.

Kimberly’s first book is titled The Repeating Body: Slavery’s Visual Resonance in the Contemporary (Duke University Press, 2015). In this powerful work, Brown carefully examines images from the era of American slavery.  

Brown’s next project topic is laser-focused. In the book tentatively titled Mortevivum: Photography and the Politics of the Visual, Brown examines images of the dead in the New York Times in 1994. Focusing on images of Rwanda, South Africa, Haiti, and Sudan, Mortevivum considers photos and anti-blackness as the world approached the 21st century.  

Professor Brown’s impressive CV includes a B.A. from Queens College, City University of New York, and M.A., M. Phil. and Ph. D. degrees from Yale University. Before landing at Dartmouth, she served as an associate or visiting faculty member at several prestigious institutions, including Rice University, Mount Holyoke College, Brown University, and Northeastern University.

In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Brown enjoys writing poetry.