New Job, New City, New Pandemic? Brown

New postdoctoral fellow, Kenly Brown, shares her research interests, COVID-19 challenges, and hopes for the spring semester.

I found the seasonal changes in weather, local farmers’ markets, and public parks to be grounding during this destabilizing time under state sanctioned violence. I have cultivated clarity and patience in a newly developed yoga practice and the power of stillness while drinking warm lemon water infused with mint. I have truly enjoyed this fall semester as an opportunity to found the Black Girlhood Studies Lab, and I have felt welcomed by my colleagues in AFAS and students who have both supported and become a part of this work. I am especially excited to teach my course called Sabotage and Anarchy: The Study of Power, Mourning, and Resistance in Black Girlhood. As co-creators, students and I will study and sit with the capaciousness of Black girlhood between the 19th and 21st centuries. We will engage various creative mediums of knowledge production to elucidate themes of girlhood in poetry, non-fiction, social science, and creative memoir.