scholarly research

is an interdisciplinary, auto-ethnographic, and multi-sited monograph that examines Black suburban placemaking and the spatial imaginaries of Black people who built suburban settlements in the post-reconstruction (1877-1915) and post-civil rights eras (1965-2008) in chicago southland—a suburban sub-region of chicago. this work is an epistemological critique of the origins of the urban question and how Black life, migration, and settlement are theorized through chicago as the definitive model of urban-regional space developed by the chicago school of sociology. through a historical and geographic analysis of Black suburbanization, i (re)historicize a Black sense of place and argue for Black suburban space as a scale of analysis that challenges how we theorize Black life and its complex geographies. 

draws from Black feminist and queer epistemologies and the wisdom of my late grandmother to rethink “the where” of ethnography and the importance of space, place, scale, and time in our methodological practices. through this work, i deeply engage with questions, contradictions, and challenges that arise when ethnographers are tasked with relying on colonial approaches to researching their "ethnographic where(s)."

my husband roderick and i are the artists behind Black chicagoland—a multi-sensory project that maps Black life across chicagoland through photography, sound, music, acoustic ecologies, personal narratives, and community cartography. Black chicagoland is a celebration of our hometown that boldly situates “Black chicagoness” as a root, route, and placemaking practice that redefines how Blackness chicagoland is analyzed, experienced, and lived. 

we have produced public exhibits at uc berkeley’s worth ryder art gallery with dr. leigh raiford and the dayton metro library with the Black midwest initiative at the university of illinois chicago. 

i am developing an archive of Black suburban life that documents Black suburban life across chicago southland with undergraduate researchers at the university of chicago. chicago southland - a suburban sub-region of chicago - has the largest number of Black suburbanites and predominantly Black suburbs in chicagoland with an extensive history of Black migration, settlement, placemaking, and social, cultural, political, and economic life. chicago southland has numerous stops on the underground railroad (ford heights, south holland), is home to the first Black owned airport and first municipality in the north governed by Black people (robbins), the first orphanage for Black children in illinois (harvey), and maintains some of the largest Black home ownership rates across the country (olympia fields - 98%). despite this, southland lacks a centralized archive and scholarship and public humanities work that captures this rich history. 

i am collaborating with chicago southland residents, local historical societies and scholars, and universities and colleges across chicagoland for future research and preservation of this  history. if you are a southland resident, scholar, or work for a university, college, library, or organization and would like to learn more about this work or collaborate, please send an email via the contact form. i will respond at my earliest convenience.