Kinitra Brooks

Associate Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture.

Contact

Michigan State University

View more experts managed by Michigan State University

Biography

Dr. Kinitra Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University. Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of Black women, genre fiction, and popular culture. She currently has two books in print: Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror (Rutgers UP 2017), a critical treatment of Black women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and Sycorax’s Daughters (Cedar Grove Publishing 2017), an edited volume of short horror fiction written by Black women. Her current research focuses on portrayals of the Conjure Woman in popular culture. Dr. Brooks served as the Advancing Equity Through Research Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise

Short Horror Fiction
Genre Fiction
Black Women
Popular Culture
Treatment of Black Women in Science Fiction
Literacies

Education

Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

M.P.H.

International Public Health and Reproductive Health Counseling

2001

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Ph.D.

Comparative Literature

2008

Xavier University of Louisiana

B.A.

English Literature

2000

News

Nia DaCosta's "Candyman" isn't just "Black trauma," it's horror triumph and here's why

Buzzfeed  online

2021-08-31

Recently, we talked to Kinitra Brooks, associate professor at Michigan State University, about how the new Candyman deals with Black trauma — and how it stacks up against the original. Here's some of what we learned: "I really enjoyed it," Brooks said. "It was not horribly scarring the way the first one was for me. I thought it was smart. I thought the visual language of it was snappy. I love getting to know the cast as a director and I enjoy how they handled Black trauma in dealing with the Black horror idea. They were very smart and intentional about it through their use of shadow puppetry and mirrors and reflections as a way to sort of take the punch out of some of the more violent or gory or traumatic parts of the film.”

View More

Beyonce, Folklore And the Power of Pop Culture

WDET  online

2020-09-11

While the term “pop culture” is often used to imply lighter topics in films, music or books, Dr. Kinitra Brooks, a Michigan State University scholar of Black feminist theory, says that it’s often through that lens that more complex ideas about identity and politics are introduced to the masses...

View More

Examining the power of pop culture to shape perception, issues and trends

MSU  online

2020-07-06

Kinitra Brooks grew up connecting ideas, asking questions and demanding the freedom to do so. Today, the associate professor in MSU’s Department of English continues to push boundaries through her study of Black women, genre fiction, popular culture and the work of conjure women as intellectual history...

View More

Journal Articles

Conjure Feminism: Tracing the Genealogy of a Black Women's Intellectual Tradition

Hypatia

2020-01-01

We are excited to announce a call for papers for a special issue of Hypatia on "Conjure Feminism," African diasporic feminist scholarship that explores the long history of black women's active construction and maintaining of a generative cosmological framework that centers spirit world as well as sacred space where the physical and spiritual worlds meet.

View more

The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'I Am

The Root

2020-09-29

Welcome back to Lovecraft Country! Wow! Talk about the Afrofuture! Talk about Black feminism! Episode 7, “I Am.” hit all of my academic erogenous zones and I can’t wait to dig into it with you...

View more

With ‘Black Is King,’ Beyoncé has gone all in on Black. And Beyoncé doesn’t lose

The Washington Post

2020-08-04

“Black Is King,” the visual companion to Beyoncé’s 2019 album “The Lion King: The Gift,” personifies Simba as a newborn, a young boy and ultimately a man who takes a journey of self-discovery — with Beyoncé as a fabulously adorned muse midwifing him through the process.

View more

Show All +