Trimiko Melancon
Professor of African American and African Studies | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Trimiko Melancon is an expert on race, gender, black feminist and sexualities studies.
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Biography
A scholar, cultural critic, and documentary filmmaker, Dr. Trimiko Melancon is Professor of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. An expert on race, gender, black feminist and sexualities studies; African American and American literary and cultural studies; African American and Black German studies; and race, media, digital and cultural production, Professor Melancon is the award-winning author of Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (co-winner of the College Language Association Book Award). She is co-editor of Black Female Sexualities with Joanne M. Braxton with a foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry. Her scholarly publications have appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, Reconstruction, The Black Scholar, and Journal of Popular Culture. As a writer and cultural critic, she has also written widely and provided expert commentaries for venues ranging from Huffington Post, Ms., Elle, Wired, Black Perspectives and Diverse Issue in Higher Education to NBC and BBC World News, among other news outlets.
An inaugural visiting scholar and fellow at the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics at Tulane University and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University, Professor Melancon has held numerous distinguished positions nationally and internationally: as the J. William Fulbright Scholar of American Literature and American Studies in Berlin, Germany, Andrew W. Mellon/Mellon Mays University Fellow (MMUF), Frederick Douglass Teaching Scholar, and a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Fellow. She has also received other prestigious awards, grants, and fellowships that have facilitated the continued support of her interdisciplinary research and teaching from the Andrew W. Mellon, Nellie Mae, Ford, and Ruth Landes/Reed Foundations as well as the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright Commission.
As a filmmaker, she has directed, written, and produced shorts, including “I See You,” a montage about race and difference during the age of Black Lives Matter, and 1955 on civil rights icon Claudette Colvin. Her 2020 feature film, What Do You Have to Lose?, which explores the history of race and the racial and political climate—from the rise of Trump and the alt-right to Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd—won the Best Feature Documentary Audience Award.
Industry Expertise (1)
Education/Learning
Areas of Expertise (4)
Black German Studies
African American Studies
Black Feminism
African Studies
Accomplishments (5)
College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award (professional)
2016
J. William Fulbright Scholar of American Literature and American Studie (professional)
n/a
Andrew W. Mellon/Mellon Mays University Fellow (MMUF) (professional)
n/a
Frederick Douglass Teaching Scholar (professional)
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Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Fellow (professional)
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Education (3)
University of Massachusetts Amherst: Ph.D., African American Studies
University of Massachusetts Amherst: M.A., African American Studies
Xavier University: B.A., English
Affiliations (1)
- Black Female Sexualities : Co-Editor
Links (1)
News (6)
Mardi Gras was historically socially and racially segregated. Black Americans formed the Zulu Krewe to become a part of the celebration.
Business Insider online
2023-02-21
Drawing from the Zulu people in Africa, the krewe members wore grass skirts, blackface, and bushy hair or ornate headgear. The stereotypical costuming was purportedly a subversive gesture to caricatures of Black identity, including minstrelry, while simultaneously embracing their ancestral roots, according to scholar Trimiko Melancon.
There is more to Kamala Harris than her memes
Daily Trojan online
2023-02-03
Dr. Trimiko Melancon, an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Rhodes College, states, “You see this one as being more of a modern sort of stereotype that really mythologizes black women as hostile, aggressive.”
Jackson had to keep her cool. These Black women could relate.
The Washington Post online
2022-03-25
Trimiko Melancon, a professor of African American and African studies at Michigan State University, said this is something many other Black women exhibit in their lives: “Black women intentionally and almost intuitively have to calibrate their posture and their demeanor and their tone to mitigate and lessen prevailing stereotypes that are circulating in people’s minds.”
'Not by accident': False 'thug' narratives have long been used to discredit civil rights movements
NBC News online
2020-09-27
Despite the numbers, the overarching portrayal of the protests by those opposed to the movement have been that they are violent, unruly and destructive. That's a strategic choice, said Trimiko Melancon, a professor of African American and American literary and cultural studies at Rhodes College.
What are roots of the "angry Black woman" stereotype?
ABC 24 Local Memphis online
2020-06-18
“You see this one as being more of a modern sort of stereotype that really mythologizes black women as hostile, aggressive,”said Dr. Trimiko Melancon, an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Rhodes College.
Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s change branding to correct racial stereotypes
FOX 13 Memphis online
2023-06-17
"Because they are starting to realize that ‘whoa' we are complicit in a system that is oppressing and leading to the brutality of black people and people of color," Melancon said.
