CAS Lecture Series: Looking Under: New Archival Readings of Kimpa Vita

Kinitra Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University. Her current research focuses on portrayals of the Conjure Woman throughout history and in contemporary popular culture. She has co-edited The Lemonade Reader (Routledge 2019), an interdisciplinary collection that explores the nuances of Beyoncé’s 2016 audiovisual project,
Lemonade. Her two other books are Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror (Rutgers UP 2017), a critical treatment of black women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and Sycorax’s Daughters (Cedar Grove Publishing 2017), an edited volume of short horror fiction written by black women. Dr. Brooks recently served as the Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African American Religions in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School for the 2022-2023 academic year.