This talk studies the prominent place of the photograph in contemporary Black feminist writing. While the presence of the photograph could be interpreted as conveying Black feminists’ sense of the limits of the written word itself—the photograph appears as a sign or symbol of what words cannot describe or will not capture—this talk argues that beautiful Black feminist writing has performed its work through the creation of a black feminist grammar that is always both discursive and visual. The visual logics of Black feminist beautiful writing have yielded a new form that includes the discursive and the representational.

Presented by the Women, Gender & Sexuality Department, the English Department, the American Studies Department, and the Sound Justic Lab, this talk comes from Nash’s recent book How We Write Now: Living With Black Feminist Theory. Jennifer C. Nash is the Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She earned her PhD in African American Studies at Harvard University and her JD at Harvard Law School. She is the author of four books: The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (awarded the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association), Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (awarded the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize by the National Women's Studies Association), Birthing Black Mothers (awarded an Honorable Mention for the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize by the National Women's Studies Association), and How We Write Now: Living With Black Feminist Theory.