Dr. Olivia Young, Assistant Professor of Art History, participated in the School of Humanities Lightning Talks earlier this week in a program sponsored by the Dean’s Office and the Humanities Research Center which serves to introduce the school’s newly arrived faculty and postdoctoral fellows and provide an opportunity for graduate students and faculty colleagues to learn about their research.
Joining Rice in 2021, Dr. Young discussed their current book project, How the Black Body Bends: Sensorial Distortions in Black Contemporary Art, which analyzes the relationship between blackness, sensate formations, and material ‘distortions’ in the artwork of black contemporary artists.
Dr. Young is an interdisciplinary scholar of African Diaspora Studies whose interests are contemporary art, visual culture, black cultural history, queer theory, black feminisms, performance studies, and disability studies. This semester, they are leading an undergraduate art history course, HART 352: Black Contemporary Art, and co-teaching an anthropology course, ANTH 477/677: Representations of Disabilities, with Dr. Helena Fietz.