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 before the great migration in chicago southland - a suburban subregion of the chicago metropolitan area. 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 as 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 american life and its complex and shifting 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, a phd candidate in the african american studies department at uc berkeley, and i are the artists behind "Black chicagoland is" — a multi-sensory public humanities initiative that maps Black life across chicagoland through photography, sound, music, acoustic ecologies, personal narratives, and community cartography. "Black chicagoland is..." is a celebration of our hometown that boldly situates Black chicagoness as a root, route, and placemaking practice that redefines how Blackness across chicagoland is lived, documented, and understood. 

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 the Black suburbs that documents Black suburban life across chicago southland -  a suburban subregion of chicago with the largest number of Black suburbanites and predominantly Black suburbs in chicagoland. the chicago southland, also known as the south suburbs of chicago or south suburban cook county, have an extensive history of Black migration, settlement, placemaking, and social, cultural, political, and economic life. 

i am collaborating with chicago southland residents, local historical societies, scholars, and universities and colleges across chicagoland to preserve 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.