Daphne A. Brooks

Daphne A. Brooks

Fellow: Awarded 2022
Field of Study: Theatre Arts and Performance Studies

Competition: US & Canada

Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University. She is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910, winner of The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR, Jeff Buckley’s Grace, and Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, winner of the 2021 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award, the 2021 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Nonfiction, the 2022 Prose Award in Music & the Performing Arts, and the Popular Culture Association’s Shaw and Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African American Popular Culture Studies. Brooks has written liner notes to accompany the recordings of Aretha Franklin, Tammi Terrell, Prince, and Nina Simone as well as stories for the New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Pitchfork.com and other press outlets. She is currently editing a critical anthology of essays exploring the legacies of David Bowie and Prince and culled from the 2017 international conference and concert which she curated. She is the co-founder and co-director of Yale University’s Black Sound & the Archive.

Photo Credit: MFJ Jacobson

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