Simone Browne
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

Abstract: Situating blackness as an absented presence in the field of surveillance studies, this talk questions how a realization of the conditions of blackness—the historical, the present, and the historical present— can help social theorists understand our contemporary conditions of surveillance.

Bio: Simone Browne is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches and researches surveillance studies, popular culture, digital media and black diaspora studies. She completed her Master’s degree and her PhD in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her work has been published in International Feminist Journal of Politics, Critical Sociology, Cultural Studies and Citizenship Studies. Her first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2015) examines surveillance with a focus on transatlantic slavery, biometrics, airports, borders and creative texts.

This talk is co-sponsored with the Department of Film & Media Studies and the Center for Black Studies.