Ph.D., University of California-Los Angeles, 1997

Professor, Department of English
Director of Graduate Studies, Center for African American Studies
35 McCosh Hall
609-258-4068
brooksd@princeton.edu

Daphne A. Brooks is professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University where she teaches courses on African-American literature and culture, performance studies, critical gender studies, and popular music culture. She is the author of two books: Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke UP), winner of the The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR and Jeff Buckley's Grace (New York: Continuum, 2005). Brooks is currently working on a new book entitled Subterranean Blues: Black Women and Sound Subcultures--from Minstrelsy through the New Millennium (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).  She is the author of numerous articles on race, gender, performance and popular music culture such as “This Voice Which Is Not One: Amy Winehouse Sings the Ballad of Sonic Blue(s)face Culture” in Women and Performance; “The Write to Rock: Racial Mythologies, Feminist Theory, and the Pleasures of Rock Music Criticism” in Women and Music; and “‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’: Surrogation & Black Female Soul Singing in the Age of Catastrophe” in Meridians. Brooks is also the author of the liner notes for The Complete Tammi Terrell (Universal A&R, 2010), winner of the 2011 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing and Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia (Sony, 2011). She is also the editor of The Great Escapes: The Narratives of William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and William Craft (New York:  Barnes & Noble Classics, 2007) and The Performing Arts volume of The Black Experience in the Western Hemisphere Series, eds. Howard Dodson and Colin Palmer (New York: Pro-Quest Information & Learning, 2006). Brooks is the recipient of 2010-2011 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship. She is the past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship Program, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.  She has also held residence at U.C. Berkeley as a President's Postdoctoral Fellow and at Harvard University as a W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute Fellow.

Selected Publications:

• Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke University Press, 2006)
• Jeff Buckley's Grace (33 1/3) (Continuum Books, 2005)
• The Great Escapes: The Narratives of William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and William Craft, (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2007)
• “ ‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’: Surrogation & Black Female Soul Singing in the Age of Catastrophe,” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 8.1 (2008).
• “Fraudulent Bodies/Fraught Methodologies,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 24.2 (2007): 306-314.
• “The End of the Line: Josephine Baker and the Politics of Black Women’s Corporeal Comedy,” The Scholar & Feminist Online: The Barnard Center for Research on Women 6.1-6.2 (Fall 2007-Spring 2008): http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/
• “Suga Mama Politicized: Beyonce’s B-Day,” The Nation.com, December 18, 2006
• “Burnt Sugar: Post-Soul Satire and Rock Memory, ”This is Pop: Critical Essays from the First Annual Experience Music Project Conference on Popular Music, ed. Eric Weisbard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004): 124-146
• “‘It’s Not Right But It’s Okay’: Contemporary Black Women’s R&B and the House that Terry McMillan Built,” SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society (5:1), Winter 2003: 32-45. Reprinted in ed. Manning Marable, The New Black Renaissance (Columbia UP, forthcoming)
• “‘The Deeds Done in My Body’: Black Feminist Theory, Performance, and the Truth About Adah Isaacs Menken,” Recovering the Body: Self Representations by African American Women Writers, eds. Michael Bennett and Vanessa Dickerson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000): 41-70
• “Lady Menken’s Secret: Adah Isaacs Menken, Actress Biographies, & the Race for Sensation,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 15.1 (1998): 68-77.

Recent Courses Taught:

• Eng 370/AAS 370-- Like a Rolling Stone: Race, Gender, Rock Music Criticism & Popular Music Culture
• Eng 375/AAS 375: Bring the Pain: The Politics & Poetics of Black Satire
• AAS 500/Eng 500 Black Feminist Theory & Practice: New Interdisciplinary Directions (w/Prof. Valerie Smith)
• ENG 572/AAS 572-- Through the Wire: A Survey of African-American Literary & Cultural Criticism
• AAS 392/Eng 392: Survey of African American Theater
• AAS 212/ENG 207 - Black Bohemia: Racial Authenticity in Post Civil Rights Music and Literature
• AAS 207/ENG 207 - Introduction to African American Literature