English Department Faculty
Jovonna Jones
Assistant Professor, English and African & African Diaspora Studies
Jovonna Jones
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes S483
Email: jonesame@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Emory University
- M.A., Harvard University
- P.hD., Harvard University
Department
Biography
Professor Jones teaches 20th and 21st century African American cultural production. She specializes in visual studies and photography, space and place, and Black feminist criticism. Her writing on Black visual culture has been published in聽Aperture,听Souls,听Callaloo,听Southern Cultures, and MCA Chicago. Her current project,听The Last Thanksgiving at West Rutland Square, blends family history, spatial study, and visual archives to resurface Black life in Boston鈥檚 South End in the wake of displacement. She is also at work on a visual and architectural study of Black women鈥檚 rooming houses, exploring how these sites鈥揳nd their contemporary traces鈥搈aterialize and memorialize Black feminist world-building in the early twentieth century. Professor Jones is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the Provost's Fellows Program at Dartmouth College. She holds her PhD and MA from Harvard University and BA from Emory University.
Publications
Articles, Essays, and Reviews
- "Review of聽Flint is Family in Three Acts," Aperture (2022)聽forthcoming
- 聽鈥淲alking with Ella: Photography, Interiority, and the Spiritual Church Movement,鈥澛燬outhern Cultures聽28, no. 2 (Summer 2022)聽forthcoming
- 鈥淭roubling Dignity, Seeking Truth: Black Feminist Vision and the Thought-World of Black Photography in the Nineteenth Century,鈥� Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 22, issue 1. Pp. 32-43.
- 鈥淎 Visual Record of Black Lives, Four Decades After Emancipation: a new book revisits W.E.B. Du Bois鈥檚 landmark 1900 exhibition on Black American Identity,鈥澛�, April 24, 2020.聽online
- 鈥淯ntitled 54 by Lorna Simpson (Review).鈥� Aperture PhotoBook Review,听issue 016, p. 18.
- 聽鈥淒aufuskie Island by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (Review).鈥� Aperture PhotoBook Review, issue 018 (2020), p.11.聽
- 鈥淣ow Found: On Faith and Wonderment in Deana Lawson鈥檚 Messier 81, Return of the Dove.鈥� in聽Fragments of a Crucifixion, ed. by Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2019.聽online
- 鈥淭he New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart (Review).鈥� The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 143, no. 2, 2019, pp. 226-228.
- 鈥淟ook, Look. Look: The Work of Black Aesthetics in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Jazz,鈥澛�Callaloo聽41:2 (2018), pp. 93-104.
- 鈥淪ouls Against the Concrete by Khalik Allah (Review).鈥� Aperture PhotoBook Review, issue 014, p. 23.
- 聽鈥淗umane Insight: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death by Courtney R. Baker (Review).鈥� Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 4, 2017, p. 324.