Graduate Students
Our doctoral and graduate programs have a combined total of more than fifty students actively pursuing the PhD or MA degree in Afro-American Studies, or our graduate certificate in African Diaspora Studies. Our students come to us from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Ivy League liberal arts colleges, as well as from international institutions as far away as Japan, France, China, Colombia, Brazil, and Austria. Each year’s class forms a cohort that collaborate and support each other in a collegial way. Recent cohorts of MA and PhD students are listed below:
Maria Ximena Abello Hurtado Ph.D.
2012
Maria Ximena Abello Hurtado is from Cali, Columbia. She is a social worker who graduated from Universidad del Valle. As an active member of the Afro Colombian Group GAUV, she has participated as researcher in several projects related to the problems of Afro Colombian women and families. Her research has helped established complex linkages between family, gerontology and intercultural issues; effects of multiple forms of discrimination on Afro descended women in the case of access to public health care in Cali.
Brooks Andrew Ph.D.
2022
Andrew Brooks grew up in Flint, Michigan and Long Beach, California. He received an undergraduate education at San Francisco State University, as well as earning graduate degrees from SFSU and the State University of New York at Albany. In addition, Andrew is the co-founder and current head editor of Living in Languages Translation Journal. His research interests revolve around the essay form through the long 20th century within African American literature and film traditions, focusing on the shift to the Black arts and power movement of the 1960s through to the greater public presence of Black queer forms of the 1980s and 90s. Within this context, Andrew is interested in the intersections of visual culture and performativity in the Black essay tradition.
Mtali Banda Ph.D.
2018
Mtali Banda grew up between Madison, WI and Atlanta Georgia. He received his B.A. in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst. He is interested in how black music has been used to share marginalized narratives and to help develop needed conversations. A musician himself, Mtali is on the literature and culture track.
Elise Barnett Ph.D.
2021
Elise Barnett is from Nassau, Bahamas and received her BA in English from the University of the Bahamas. Her research interests, which include critical race studies, gender studies, and theories of diaspora and decolonization, are informed by an interest in exploring the ways Afro-Caribbean women respond to traumas caused by colonialism and neocolonialism in their everyday praxis.
Dominick Braswell Ph.D.
2020
Dominick Braswell is from Brooklyn, New York. He is a community organizer who works predominantly in poor/working-class black & brown neighborhoods. Dominick received his B.A. in Africana Studies with a minor in American Studies from Brooklyn College at the City University of New York. His research focuses on public housing and the ways that despite a body of scholarship deeply critical of welfare reform (and the attacks on the social safety net), these scholars have overlooked the attack on public housing. Dominick's broader research interests include 20th Century Afro-American history, Black Social Movements, gender studies, race, and public policy
Biko Caruthers Ph.D.
2017
Biko Caruthers is a PhD Candidate in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Biko holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Studies Education from Oklahoma Christian University (2011) and a Masters degree in History from the University of Central Oklahoma (2017). Biko’s research interests include 19th- and 20th-century Black literature, Black visual culture, gender studies, queer theory, childhood studies, Afropessimism, psychoanalysis, slavery and its afterlives and Black critical theory. Biko’s dissertation-in-progress is titled “Black Changeling: The Uncanny Genius of the African Child” which explores how Black cultural producers, specifically writers and visual artists, have deployed the figure of the Black child in order to critique and disregard the category of the Human.
Jordón Crawford Ph.D.
2022
Jordón Crawford is a current PhD student of Afro-American Studies (History and Politics) from Portmore, Jamaica. His main areas of research include Caribbean Studies, Race and the Law, Black Philosophy, and Black Queer and Feminist Theory. Jordón was a 2017 Davis Scholar at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA where he earned a double bachelor with honours in Politics and Race and Ethnic Studies. During his undergraduate studies, he was awarded the 2020 Perry Research Grant to conduct research with Prof. Zahi Zalloua on Posthumanist Studies and Black Ontologies. He received the best thesis award for his Politics thesis “Chunnel Deh a Yaad: Rethinking Jamaican Republicanism as a Solution to the Colonial Predicament”. He has conducted research on/with several leading Black scholars such as Drs. Angela Davis, Frank Wilderson, Calvin Warren etc. After his undergrad studies, Jordón went on to continue his legal studies, after which he worked as a Legal Project Manager at JND Legal Administration in Seattle, WA. Jordón is a community organiser and activist, violist, wine connoisseur, and lover of all things food.
Maya Cunningham Ph.D.
2019
Maya Cunningham is an ethnomusicologist, cultural activist and jazz vocalist. She has an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also holds a BMus. in jazz studies from Howard University and a MA in jazz performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. Her research interests are in African-American and Southern African traditional music and identity, jazz, culturally responsive music education and applied ethnomusicology. In 2017 she received a Fulbright fellowship to study traditional music and national identity in Botswana and has presented her research and writing at conferences nationally and internationally. In 2017 she launched Ethnomusicology In Action, a project thatuses music, video, radio broadcasts and educational curricula to share stories about the people of Africa, African America and the Diaspora. As a part of this project Cunningham has a radio show called Music In Culture: Sounds of the Black Experiencethat airs monthly on WOWD 94.3 FM Takoma Radio. Learn more at www.EthnomusicologyInAction.com
Travis Davis Ph.D.
2016
Travis Davis is from Mobile, Alabama. He received his BA in History from the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, and his M.Ed. with a concentration in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has also studied at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and Bishop State Community College in Mobile, Alabama. His interests include the intersection of race and education, and how this intersection has historically impacted the black community.
Makhai Dickerson-Pells MA
2021
Makhai Pells was born and raised in the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod, Ma. He received a BA in History from UMass Amherst in 2021. Aside from academics he was involved in cultural student organizations at UMass as the former President of the African Student Association, Vice President of the Cape Verdean Student Alliance, and Event Coordinator for the Native American Student Association. His research interests include Afro-Indigenous identity, cultural syncretism, African Diasporic studies, languages (including creoles and pidgins) Black Maritime history, and the cross-cultural relationships of Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas, especially in New England and the eastern United States.
Letícia Fernanda Ph.D.
2022
Letícia Fernanda is from Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds a Bachelor's degree in English and Portuguese language and literature from the Federal University of Lavras. Her research focuses on examining the effects of colonialism in the formation of Afro-Brazilian identities and culture, including linguistic quilombos, as well as understanding how black identities and languages can be enhanced through the Critical Race Theory.
Ph.D.
2016
José Gonzalez Ph.D.
2018
José Gonzalez currently resides in Springfield, MA. He received his B.A. in Sociology with a double minor in Philosophy and Ethnic Studies from Westfield State University. José is interested in investigating how Colonialism has impacted the development of African descendants in North America and the Caribbean. His plan is to bridge the divide amongst African descendants in the Americas through educational praxis.
Olivia Haynes Ph.D.
2021
Olivia Haynes is from Philadelphia, PA. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa society, she received her B.A. in Visual and Material Culture with Africana Studies and Peace Studies from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD. Her research interests include unpacking historicized spaces and investigating ways of visualizing and reconstructing memories of the Middle Passage through the lens of visual and material culture.
Keyona Jones Ph.D.
2014
Keyona Jones joined the M.A. program and is from Springfield, MA. Keyona received her B.A. in English and Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst. She is president of her sorority, Delta Xi Phi Multicultural Sorority Inc. Keyona’s interests include Women of the Harlem Renaissance. She would like to examine the female artists, both musicians and writers of the time, with a focus on the literature of Zora Neale Hurston.
Karl Lyn Ph.D.
2020
Karl Lyn was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, California. He received his B.A in Africana Studies and Educational Studies from Dickinson College, and his Master’s of Education (M.Ed) from UMass Amherst. His interests include the intersections between Black cultural production, racial politics, and education in the United States.
Kymberly S. Newberry Ph.D.
2016
Kymberly Newberry is from Los Angeles, California. A proud Frances Perkins Scholar, she received her B.A. in International Relations from Mount Holyoke College. Her interests include, the intersectionality of visual art and diplomacy, Francophone Africa and the influence of Africa on the Iranian Revolution.
Anthony Phillips Ph.D.
2012
Anthony Phillips is from Philadelphia, PA and received his M.A. degree in Black Religion in the African Diaspora from Yale Divinity School. In 2010, he graduated as a Benjamin Elijah Mays Scholar with a B.A. in African American Studies and Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Anthony is an alumni member of The Institute for Responsible Citizenship and is the proud Co-Founder of Youth Action, a Philadelphia based youth-led service non-profit operated by young African Americans.
Cynara Robinson Ph.D.
2008
Cynara Robinson is from New Orleans, Louisanna. She received her B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in History from Howard University. Her research interests include looking at social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inclusive of interests in the urban rebellions and those occurring on black college campuses.
Ph.D.
2018
Tatiana Rodriguez 2020
Tatiana Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and theatre practitioner. She's received bachelor’s degrees in Theater, English, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As an artistic scholar, Tatiana's research centers on communal storytelling, cultural myth making, and performances of protest in the Civil Rights Era as well as in the Black Power and Black Arts Movements.
Ivan Rosario Ph.D.
2015
Ivan Rosario was born and raised in Springfield, MA. He received his B.A. in Ethnic and Gender Studies from Westfield State University. Ivan interests focus on the use of Hip Hop, sports and other forms of entertainment as social tools of exploitation and degradation of Black culture.
Yelana Sims Ph.D.
2017
Yelana Sims is from Spartanburg, S.C. She received her B.A. in African American and Diaspora Studies from Vanderbilt University and her M.A. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from George Washington University. Her interests include Black female sexuality, gender and sexual performativity within social media and popular culture, as well as modern iterations of respectability politics. She has received the REAL fellowship from the University.
Erika Slocumb Ph.D.
2016
Erika Slocumb was born and raised of Springfield, MA. She is a mother, an artist, a community organizer, world traveler and an advocate for social justice. Erika is the cofounder of the community organization the Western Mass Women’s Collective. Erika received her B.A. in Social Justice Education and a MS in Labor Studies from UMass Amherst.
Wil Smith 2021
Marcus Smith Ph.D.
2021
Marcus Smith is from Houston, Texas. He received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Houston and his M.A. in African-American Studies from Georgia State University. His research interests include the study of domestic and international social movements, history of the Southern United States, critical race theory, Africana critical theory, and the construction of race, ethnicity and nationalism in the United States as it relates to interracial political relationships, ideology, and practices.
Paul Michael Thomson Ph.D.
2021
Paul Michael Thomson is an interdisciplinary scholar, theatre artist, and co-founder of The Story Theatre, 501(c)(3) in Chicago, IL. Paul Michael's research explores the intersections of creative practice and Black liberation, with a particular investment in the new play development praxes of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago. Other research interests include Black feminisms, contemporary drama, and the role of writing workshops in Black creative communities. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Africana Studies, a BFA in Acting, and minors in Spanish & Art History from the Honors College at the University of Arizona. He has received fellowships from the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center, and the Flinn Foundation. To engage more, please visit paulmichaelthomson.com.
Bianki Torres Ph.D.
2017
Bianki Torres is originally from Providence, Rhode Island. He double-majored in History, with a focus in Latin America, and Africana Studies at Rhode Island College. After a year hiatus from academia, he returned to school to receive his Master’s in Afro-American Studies at UMass’ W.E.B. Dubois Department, with a focus on African American music history. Much of Bianki’s interests have been guided by his journey in higher education and exposure to various fields. Some of these interests include Black feminisms, Marxism, Black Radical Thought, Decolonial Praxis, Prison Abolition and, very recently, Black Trans Studies. On his spare time, if he isn’t digging through record stores for vinyl, he’s playing the guitar somewhere out in the world.
Robert Williams Ph.D.
2011
Robert Williams was born and raised in the Pioneer Valley. He received his B.A. in Education/History from American International College and an M.A. in Medieval History from Saint Andrews University. He is interested in examining the ghettoization and marginalization of African American experiences in American Secondary School U.S. History curricula.
Christian Woods Ph.D.
2020
Christian Floyd Woods was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. in Afro-American Studies from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst in 2020. As an undergraduate at UMass Amherst, Woods was a member of numerous cultural organizations, including C.V.S.A., H.A.S.A., S.O.C.A., B.S.U., A.S.A., E.O.R.O. as well as serving as secretary for the Afro-American Studies Undergraduate Council. Woods is well rounded in African-American and African history as a whole but specializes in 20th century African-American music history, African-American film history, and the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.
Cécile Yézou Ph.D.
2016
Cécile Yézou is from Paris, France. She received her double License (equivalent to B.A.) in French Literature and Language / English studies from Sorbonne University Paris IV. She then pursued a M.A. in English studies, specializing in Afro-American history. Her research interests include 20th century history, women's history, and interdisciplinary approaches to history including psychology, theory and communication studies. Her current research focuses on a comparative analysis of interracial sexual assault, with an emphasis on black women's experiences.
Jia Zhang Ph.D.
2019
