Writer. Scholar. Researcher. Creative.
Credit: Calla Evans
I am the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity and an Associate Professor of Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University. I am the Founder and Director of Mapping Ontario's Black Archives (MOBA), and the author of four books: Beauty in a Box, Uncle, Canada and the Blackface Atlantic, and my most recent work, Staging Blackface in Canada, which examines variety shows, public amusements, and racial caricature in Canada between 1898 and 1919. I also co-edited Creative Industries in Canada. (Click for more).
My Most Read Blog Post
My Research Programs
Writing
I engage in the intersectional historical and transnational study of race, culture, images, and performance as they intertwine with archives and historical records, production, and creative industries.
Creativity
I have authored multiple books, curated events, performed as part of Nuit Blanche, and have written over 60 articles in newspapers, magazines, online publications, and more.
Community Practice
I am Founder and Director of Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives, a platform that is reimagining digital curation, storytelling and the living archive as a source of knowledge production and cultural memory.
Creative Practice
Black Creative Lab produces video content that educates, celebrates, and informs audiences about the depth, breadth, and expressive history of Black people across sites of Diaspora.
Black Creative Lab on YouTube & MOBA
My Black Creative Lab posts social media content produced by MOBA, the digital platform I founded in 2021 that is re-imagining digital curation, storytelling and the living archive as a source of knowledge production and cultural memory.
MOBA is not an archive. We are here to connect you to archives across Canada. If you have artifacts, images, or documents that you would like to donate to an archive, contact us and we can help facilitate that process.
Substack & TEDx Talk
Is positive thinking mandatory for success?