Guest Artists

Jayna Brown

    Professor, Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute

    Jayna Brown headshot

    Photo courtesy Jayna Brown

    About

    Jayna Brown is professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute. As well as numerous essays, Brown is the author of Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Duke University Press, 2008) which won the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association and Erroll Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. Her second book is titled Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds (Duke University Press, 2021). Brown is co-editor of the journal Social Text and has also been a contributing journalist for NPR's music programming. Her areas of research and specialization include performance studies, black expressive cultures, black feminism, speculative fictions, music, and our changing media landscape. Her current work is located at the intersections of science and performance.