Robin Brooks

Associate Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus

Chapter Member: Central Pennsylvania SSN

Areas of Expertise:

Connect with Robin

About Robin

Brooks's research focuses on matters concerning Black communities in the United States and the wider African Diaspora, particularly African American and English-speaking Caribbean populations. Overarching themes in Brooks's writings include inequality, social justice, contemporary cultural and literary studies as well as working-class studies, Black feminist theory, digital humanities, higher education management, and education policy. Brooks serves organizations that participate in antiracist and anti-discriminatory struggles.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

2022 Can Be a Watershed for Black Politics in Western Pa.

Commentary, October 2022

In the News

Interviewed in "Class Interruptions," Black Agenda Report, March 15, 2022.

Interviewed in "Black Women’s Cultural Production," Black Perspectives, March 2, 2022.

Research discussed by "The Impact of the CCOVID-19 Pandemic on the Postdoctoral Community - an Every Special Edition," National Postdoctural Association, March 11, 2020.

Publications

Introduction—Visionary Praxis: Paule Marshall’s, Ntozake Shange’s, and Toni Morrison’s Foresight Concerning Sick Violence and Violent Sickness (edited with Meina Yates-Richard). (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2021).

Focuses on the interconnections of Black women writers with the crises of COVID-19 and ongoing anti-Black violence.

Inequality and Division in African Diasporic Women's Fiction (The University of North Carolina Press, 2021).

Examines contemporary literary portrayals of class to critique inequalities and divisions in the U.S. and Caribbean.

"Black, Female, and Teaching Social Justice: Transformative Pedagogy for Challenging Times" in Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons, edited by Stephanie Y. Evans, Andrea D. Domingue and Tania Mitchell, (SUNY Press, 2019), 183-199.

Explores how professors diversify pedagogical practices and embrace a social justice education approach to underscore the reality of inequalities and equipping students with skills to resist them.

"A Dangerous Single Story" The Journal of Pan African Studies 12, no. 1 (2018): 21-41.

Portrays how African women writers dispel stereotypes or dangerous single stories that have wrongly categorized the over one billion people that make up the continent of Africa.

"R.I.P. Shirts or Shirts of the Movement" An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2018): 807-830.

Presents a study of R.I.P. (rest in peace) shirts, also known as memorial shirts, which are significant and visible pieces in the Movement for Black Lives.

"The Haves and the Have-Nots" The Journal of West Indian Literature 26, no. 1 (2018): 70-91.

Explores Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay’s work and foregrounds human rights violations as a demonstration of the limited efficacy of human rights treaties in contemporary Jamaican society.