American Studies

Bryant Brown Jr. is a PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies at Brown University. Beholden to diasporic Black studies scholarship situated at the nexus between queer of color critique, cultural studies, performance studies, literary criticism, and aesthetic theory, his research asks: how and what does inventive Black art demand? His dissertation, tentatively titled Antimanifesto Poetics: Black Avant-Gardism’s Queer Critique of the Manifesto Genre, suggests that Black avant-gardist manifestos refuse a static collectivity, and a fixed political platform, as a basis for cultural organizing. Instead, he argues that Black avant-gardism uses nonsensical poetics to invite habits of the mind that motivate a relentless confrontation with modernity’s founding racial antagonisms. Bryant holds a BA from the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University, and a MA from the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. 

Education

• B.A., Black Studies, Columbia University, 2015
• M.A., Public Humanities, Brown University, 2021