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Abstract Texture

About

Brenton Boyd (he/they) is an anti-disciplinary artist, theorist, and rootworker. He currently holds the title of Assistant Professor of Black Studies in the Department of English and Writing at University of Tampa. Brenton's research traces networks of sexual fantasy, death, and desire across black femme expressive and religious cartographies.

 

His first book project—World-Wrecking: Blackness, Eschatology, and Performance—channels the work of Sylvia Wynter into an apocalyptic theology informed by the magico-religious cultures of the Greater Caribbean. He is also at work on a second book project—The Black Bottom: Sexual Underworlds & Spectral Transpossessions—which is a shadow history of black queer and transfemme death doulas, sex workers, performance artists, and conjurors in the Caribbean and US South.

Brenton's scholarship has been generously supported by the Mellon Mays Graduate Initiative, the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, UNCF, Virginia Humanities, and many others. You can read their work in such academic venues as liquid blackness (Duke University Press), Syndicate Theology, and the Journal for Social Transformation.

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Education

2018 - 2024

Emory University

Doctor of Philosophy in English 

Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

Teaching Associateship in African American Studies

2021

Emory University

Interim Master of Arts in English & WGSS

Qualifying Exams in Black Queer Studies, Continental Philosophy, Caribbean Literary & Performance Theory

2015 - 2018

Hampton University

Bachelor of Arts in English

Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies

Awards, Scholarships and Grants

  • HBCU Scholars Fellowship (2023-2024), Virginia Humanities

  • Graduate Research Fellow (2023), Symposium on Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis

  • Travel and Research Grant (2021), Institute for Citizens and Scholars

  • Predoctoral Research Grant (2021), Social Science Research Council and MMGIP

  • George W. Woodruff Fellowship (2018-2024), Emory University

  • UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship (2015-2018), Hampton University

  • See CV for more ...

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