Rededication: Hurston, Black Object Thinking, and “the black feminist critical enterprise”

Abstract

Her dissertation, titled "Psychoanalytics: Toward A Black Object Study," theorizes blackness through engagement with three representational fields: literature, psychoanalysis, and black studies. Building on Spillers's term "psychoanalytics," she makes a case for the usefulness of psychoanalytic thinking for black feminist literary methods. Though her intervention speaks to African American literary studies specifically, it is directly shaped by Caribbean afro-diasporic literature and thought. She also participated in the 2021 NEH Summer Institute "Hurston on the Horizon."