Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0547-1824

Date of Award

Spring 5-6-2024

Degree Type

Closed Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Moving Image Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Alessandra Raengo

Second Advisor

Dr. Jade D. Petermon

Third Advisor

Dr. Jenny Gunn

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Lauren M. Cramer

Abstract

“A Slow Archive of Black Study: The Mixtape” approaches blackness as practice through critical and creative engagement, imagining this document as a mixtape, organized as a series of tracks. Inspired by my late father’s mixtape-making practice, I follow a mixtape methodology of theory, practice, curation, and black life that creates something new, engaging objects as albums, or recognized wholes not intended to be fully accounted for. Inherently archival and fugitive, the slow archive that emerges through a mix-tape methodology is also a practice of black study. This dissertation moves between theory and practice to apply a liquid blackness praxis: blackness is not only what we study but how we study. At stake is the disruption of the institutionalization of Black Studies through disrupting the infrastructure of thinking, even at the risk of uncertainty. Through a mixture of theoretical and creative digging in the crates, each track becomes a critical part of a collective, a common-unity, a movement—a gathering of, with, and for one another—remixing, rewriting, rewinding, reiterating, reforming, and reshaping in its liquidity. Resisting. Studying. Grounding the mixtape in the slow archive of black life sutures practice to a sociality that cares for blackness as it is being, seeing, and being seen.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/36965022

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