Robert Lee Award, Undergraduate Teaching and Mentorship Award, Emory University. Gender and Race Award, Women's Studies
RIZVANA BRADLEY Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and African American Studies | Yale University
[email protected] | RizvanaBradley.com Film and Media Studies 53 Wall Street PO BOX 208363 New Haven, CT 06520
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ E D U C A T IO N 2013
Ph.D. Duke University, Department of Literature Graduate Certificates in African and African American Studies and Women’s Studies Dissertation Committee: Fred Moten (director), Maurice Wallace, Michael Hardt, Antonio Viego
2012
Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program, Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow. Tutor: José Muñoz
2004
B.A. (Highest Honors), Williams College, Political Theory and English Thesis: Sensing the Limit: Towards a Theory of the Political in Postcolonial Critique (Distinction Awarded)
R E S E A R C H IN T E R E S T S Film Studies, Film Theory, Literature and Literary Studies, Black Studies, African-American Art and Art History, Visual Studies, Methodologies of Art History, American Studies, Literature and Literary Studies, Performance Studies, Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Critical Theory, Aesthetic Theory, Psychoanalysis, Affect Theory, Continental Philosophy and Political Theory, Postcolonial Studies F A C U L T Y A P P O IN T M E N T S CURRENT APPOINTMENT
Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies and African-American Studies, Yale University Affiliations: Art History, American Studies, Women’s Studies PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS
Research Fellow in Contemporary Art, University College London (Institute for Advanced Study) Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University B O O K IN P R O G R E S S RESURFACED FLESH: BLACK AESTHETICS UNBOUND Resurfaced Flesh: Black Aesthetics Unbound aims to examine how several artists engage in the artistic and performative disassembly of the black body. The book’s central claim is that the achievement of modern aesthetic forms are thoroughly inflected and disrupted by enduring racial histories. Focusing on large-scale installations and artistic strategies that draw from conceptualism and minimalism, the book brings themes of figuration, abstraction, and form in aesthetic theory to bear on the racialized and gendered display of the body in contemporary art, and specifically directs readers to the flesh as a frame that denotes how these artists engage in crucial deconstructions of the black body.
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PUBLICATIONS EDITED PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, double special issue on “The Haptic: Textures of Performance.” Vol. 24, no. 2-3 (2014). P E E R R E V IE W E D A R T IC LE S 2018 “Black Cinematic Gesture and the Aesthetics of Contagion.” TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 62, no. 1 (2018): 14-30. 2017
“Vestiges of Motherhood: The Maternal Function in Recent Black Cinema.” Film Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2 (2017): 46-52.
2016
“Poethics of the Open Boat.” AcceSSions: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, no. 2 (2016): . “Living in the Absence of a Body.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, "Black Holes: Afro-Pessimism, Blackness and the Discourses of Modernity," no. 28 (2016): .
2015
“Transferred Flesh: Reflections on Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P.” TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 59, no. 1 (2015): 161-66. “Reinventing Capacity.” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, “Fugitivity and the Filmic Imagination,” vol. 7 no. 1 (2015): 162-78.
2014
“Introduction: Other Sensualities.” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, “The Haptic: Textures of Performance,” vol. 24, no. 2-3 (2014): 129-33. “Awakening to the World: Relation, Totality, and Writing from Below.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, vol. 36, no. 1 (2014): 112-31.
A R T C R IT IC IS M 2018 2017
“On Mimi Cherono Ng’ok.” Berlin Biennale. “The Quiet Bohemia of Lynette-Yiadom Boakye,” Parkett 99. “Ways of the Flesh” Barbara Hammer’s Vertical Worlds.” Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies. Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York. “Aesthetic Inhumanisms: Toward an Erotics of Otherworlding.” Trigger: Gender as Tool and Weapon. The New Museum, New York.
2016
“The Time of Descent.” Descent. Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia.
2015
“Senga Nengudi: Stretched Infinity.” Dominique Levy Gallery, New York. “Going Underground: An Interview with Simone Leigh.” Art in America. “An Interview with Artist Pope. L.” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. 2
E D IT O R IA L P O S IT IO N S EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER
boundary2: an international journal of literature and culture Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory
CURATORIAL PROJECTS 2018
Stedelijk Museum of Art and Studium Generale Rietveld Academy There’s a Tear in the World: Touch After Finitude Amsterdam, March 23rd, 2018 "There's A Tear In The World: Touch After Finitude," is part of a four-day conference guest curated by Karen Archey, Mark Paterson, Rizvana Bradley and Jack Halberstam. Bradley's conference day focuses on how the haptic – relating to or based on touch – is thought and experienced artistically, philosophically, and politically in life, art and design, and theory. With the participation of Hortense Spillers, Eyal Weizman, Aracelis Girmay, Erin Manning, Ligia Lewis, Wu Tsang, and Lynette Yaidom-Boakye. For more information see: http://holdmenow.rietveldacademie.nl/conference/title.
2017
Serpentine Gallery Hapticality, Waywardness, and the Practice of Entanglement London, UK, July 8th, 2017 In collaboration with Serpentine Gallery, on the occasion of Arthur Jafa's exhibition, Professor Saidiya Hartman (Columbia University) joined scholars, artists and writers to discuss themes from her landmark text, Scenes of Subjection, including questions of political economy and ecology, race, gender and legal theory. Participants included Helen Cammock, Tina Campt, Kodwo Eshun, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jack Halberstam, Saidiya Hartman, Christian Nyampeta and Karen Salt.
2016
British Film Institute On Blackness, Cinema and the Moving Image: A King's College London Symposium Curated with Rosalind Galt London, UK, November 5th, 2016 This symposium, co-hosted by BFI and King’s College London Department of Film Studies, brought scholars and practitioners together to share insights into the history of black cinema, black politics and black stardom. Through presentations and discussions, we considered the historical evolution of the black movie star, while also examining “blackness” in visual culture, and the aesthetics and politics of black stardom. We also examined strategies of resistance in black cinema, that stretch from the earliest activist actors through to today’s most vocal proponents of the Black Lives Matter movement. Participants included: Arthur Jafa, Jacqueline Stewart, Michael Gillespie, and Rosalind Galt.
TALKS LECTURES 2017
Ulrich Museum of Art. Lecture for exhibition, Looking at the Overlooked. (November 6) Rutgers University. Scenes of Subjection at 20. (October 5and 6) Tate Modern. Fanon and Visual Culture: Fanon Now. (May 24) University of Sussex. Black Flesh & the Afrodiaspora. American Studies Seminar. (May 3) Modern Art Oxford. Performative Genealogies of Black Abstraction. (April 20) Goldsmiths’ Department of Visual Cultures, London. The Aesthetics of Thrown-ness. (March 9) 3
Barnard Center for Research on Women. The Haptic. (March 4) Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris, France. Lecture on Glenn Ligon. (January 14) R O U N D T A B L E S A N D C O N V E R S A T IO N S 2018 Jeu de Paume, Paris. Conversation with Steffani Jemison. (January 20) 2017 Film Society at Lincoln Center, New York. Dimensions in Black: Perspectives on Black Film and Media. (December 5) Anthology Film Archives, New York. Conversation with Manthia Diawara. (Nov 13) Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, New York. Black Skin, White Masks: Cinema Inspired by Frantz Fanon. (October 26) Yale University. Conversation with Phillippe-Alain Michaud. (September 5) ICA London. Listening to Images, Conversation with Tina Campt. (July 12) Tate Modern, London. Conversation with Larry Achiampong and David Blandy: Finding Fanon, UK. (June 30) UCL, London. Conversation with Glenn Ligon and Mignon Nixon. (April 26) Raven Row, London. Conversation with Martine Syms. (April 23) New Museum, New York. "Haptics," Conversation with Simone Leigh, part of "The Critical Matter of Performance." (February 17) British Film Institute, London. Critics Salon: Moonlight. (February 13) Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Conversation with Simone Leigh. (January 8) 2016 Tate Britain, London. Black Artists and Modernism. (October 6-8) Yale University. Conversation with Isaac Julien. (September 29) The Showroom, London. Conversation with Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. Finding Fanon. (June 30) ICA London. Political Identity and the Moving Image. (May 27) Cornell University. Hortense Spillers Symposium. (March 18-19) 2015 New Museum, New York. Conversation with Denise Ferreira da Silva. (May 7)
GRANTS , AWARDS , FELLOWSHIPS GRANTS 2017 2015 2012 2010 2009 AWARDS 2015 2012 2008 2 0 0 5 -0 9 F E L L O W S H IP S 2 0 1 5 -1 7 2 0 1 2 -1 3 2011
Griswold Research and Travel Grant, Yale University Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Book Grant Dartmouth Future of American Studies Institute, The Graduate School, Duke University Research and Travel Grant, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Research Grant, Social Science Research Council
Robert Lee Award, Undergraduate Teaching and Mentorship Award, Emory University Gender and Race Award, Women’s Studies Program, Duke University Emerging Scholars Award, Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Technologies, Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), Duke University Scholarship, James B. Duke Endowment, The Graduate School, Duke University
Research Fellowship, University College London Dissertation Fellowship, Women’s Studies, The Graduate School, Duke University Summer Research Fellowship, The Graduate School, Duke University 4
SELECTED TEACHING GRADUATE COURSES Race and the Philosophy of Media This course will actively interrogate the intersection of political philosophy, media theory and ‘race’ as a global idea. Specifically we will read race into media theory and its critical genealogy, thinking most specifically about how an idea of ‘technical man’ emerges at the nexus of media philosophy, and a racial discourse that generates ‘race’ as a world historical idea and a cultural fiction, engineered and deployed in the interest of imperialism, colonialism, New World slavery. How might race impact how we think about the history of what Loroi-Gourhan calls “exteriorization,” or the history of technics in terms of what Bernard Stiegler calls “epiphylogenesis,” for example? How does race compel us to rethink the figure of the human that frames a media philosophy discourse? Race, Affect, Cinema A graduate seminar that draws out the importance of the recent “affective turn” in emergent theoretical discourses, in order to think about the organization of emotion and feeling within cinema, particularly cinema that foregrounds questions of race and racial intimacy. The class thinks about the relationship between race and feeling, as well as the development of what Sianne Ngai terms, "minor feelings," racial affect and black affect. Our texts will take up many of the key texts within Affect Theory, but we focus on the examples of racial affect we see emerging within various cinema traditions. Black Affect The course advances a central question: what kinds of affects do resistance, revolutionary thought and action, improvisation and performance, compel and demand? In this course we will engage in the study an collective exploration of minor and minoritarian affects, feelings and emotions in relation to a range of racial formations from a variety of cinematic and post-cinematic texts and objects. These affective dispositions include but are not limited to: depression, melancholia, boredom, backwardness, blackness, envy, irritation, anger, rage, love, animatedness, stuplimity, ecstasy. The Dark Lady in Cinema Starting with the central figure of what Daphne Brooks calls, “the Black(ened) Woman” the course will examine the trope of the “dark lady” in cinema, at the critical nexus of race and sexuality. We will engage constructions, articulations, and representations of racialized and gendered bodies, and the themes of class, sexuality, subjection and transformation the image of the dark lady seems to necessarily body forth in the cinema. How does the racialized trope of black femininity, coded as excessive, unruly, unpredictable and illegible, become the unsighted underpinning for other socially and sexually maligned bodies? We will examine the production, reproduction and circulation of the dark lady primarily in contemporary cinema, and how the imaginative figure of the dark lady is consigned to invisible or hypervisible women of color, transgendered, lesbian and queer masculinities. UNDERGRADUATE COURSES Cinema, Photography, and the Archive This course examines the relationship between cinema, photography and philosophy. Many scholars have investigated what the arrival of cinema did for photography, and how the moving image changed our relation to the still image. This course will start with these prompts, but then move forward to ask why cinema and photography have been so drawn to each other. The course encourages students to think very carefully about medium specificity, in an age that decries the death of the medium. We will think collectively about the structure and implications of closeups, freeze frames, as well as the countless portrayals of photographers on screen. Are these signs of cinema’s enduring attraction to the still image? Is the photographic merely the static condition of possibility for the cinematic? But even beyond the deep influence of cinema on photography, we will ask why it is that philosophy finds itself to be cinematic, after a history of mistaking itself as simply photographic. 5
Performance Onscreen: Introduction to Performance Studies This course will explore contemporary artists’ approaches to politics, tradition, social engagement, and the art world itself. The course maps the global rise of performance to the present day, focusing on the relationship between minority performance and social survival. Thinking about how performance intersects with experimental filmmaking, the class advances a central question: What does it mean to perform, race, gender and sexuality? How are identities made, unmade and recast within experimental performance? Do performances enact processes of disidentification that offer us new ways of understanding the ways outsiders negotiate mainstream culture? Art, Media, and the Body This course draws from a diverse range of writing in contemporary critical theory, (phenomenology, new materialism), contemporary feminist thought, queer theory and Black Studies in order to question underlying assumptions about the body and embodied spaces in contemporary art and culture. Drawing from film, literature, performance and contemporary art, fashion, as well as architecture, students think about a range of philosophical and critical themes, including the role of the body, the virtual construction of time and space, questions of affect, and sensation, all of which inform concerns over representation, embodiment and material agency. Black Media and Poetics This takes four modes of black cultural production as its object of inquiry: film, contemporary art, literature and poetry. It encourages students to think about contemporary experimental forms of black film and media as they relate to black literary and poetic traditions from the 20th century. The course makes use of literary and historical black cultural archives at Yale University's Beinecke Library that are relevant to this historical period. Cinema of the Black Diaspora Focusing on film movements across the Black diaspora, including the Caribbean and African cinema, and with a special emphasis placed on African-American and Black British Cinema, this course traces the social conditions that informed these various film traditions, and emphasize the interrelation between politics and aesthetics in the invention of black cinematic forms. Migration and the Moving Image This course asks how we can conceive of a genuine body politic through new forms of cinematic representation that try to grapple with the complex figures of the migrant, immigrant, and the refugee in global terms. Examining cinematic representations of all three, the class theorizes the particular histories and cultures of diasporic peoples with respect to contemporary discourses on globalization, diaspora, and migration, theories of the multitude and of empire, and post-imperial forms of power, biopolitics, control, and surveillance. We examine the forms of tenuous subjectivity such displacements give rise to, particularly with respect to contemporary European cinemas that depict black migrants, refugees, and exiles, as well as contemporary artists working more globally around these same issues.
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SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND SERVICE
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Yale Review Editorial Search Committee, Yale University African-American Studies Endeavors Research Initiative, Yale University Film and Media Studies Advisory Committee, Yale University
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Coordinator, WGGS Research Seminar, Emory University Steering Committee, Studies in Sexualities Initiative, Emory University Andrew Mellon-Mays Minority Undergraduate Fellowship Mentor, Emory University
GRADUATE SERVICE
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Research Director and Web Editor, Certificate Program in Sexuality Studies, Duke University Research Assistant to Robyn Wiegman, Literature and Women’s Studies, Duke University Assistant to the Director (Ian Baucom), John Hope Franklin Institute for the Humanities, Duke University Program Coordinator, Annual Seminar, Franklin Humanities Institute, “Innovating Forms,” Coconvened by Miriam Cooke, Fred Moten (English), Duke University Program Coordinator, Annual Seminar, Franklin Humanities Institute, “Alternative Political Imaginaries,” Co-convened by Michael Hardt (Literature), Robyn Wiegman (Women’s Studies) Assistant to the Director (Srinivas Aravamudan), John Hope Franklin Institute for the Humanities, Duke University Editorial Board, Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture and Politics Editorial Intern, Duke University Press, Summer
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