Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown is a dynamic writer, researcher, performer, mentor and instructor. She is an assistant professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies and Educational Policy Studies Departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Her research documents, analyzes, and interrogates Black girls’ lived experiences as it intersects with cultural constructions of Black girlhood. More specifically, Dr. Brown’s scholarship interests include cultural politics, girls’ studies, educational practice, theatre and drama, and qualitative methodology. She is developing her second book project, The Black Girl Community Handbook: Creating Accountable Truths, an ethnographic account of the creative processes Black girls rely on to make intelligible the ways power, spirituality, memory, and performativity structure meanings of belonging. As an agent of change, she values the leadership development of her students and as a professor, she is committed to making the “classroom” a transformative public space that relates to and resonates with students' experiences by incorporating their intellect, interests and talents into the course content.
In addition to her commitments as an academic scholar, Dr. Brown also works with university students and community residents to co-organize, Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (Solhot). Solhot is a “space” dedicated to the celebration of Black girlhood in all of its complexity. As a critical method of civic engagement, Solhot is a creative cutting-edge application of Dr. Brown’s studied and research interventions in Black Girls’ Studies and Hip Hop Feminism.
Through her extensive training in art-based methodologies, Dr. Brown’s research is interdisciplinary. As a writer, she produces plays, performance texts, photo-performance exhibits, books, and journal articles to document the lived experiences of Black girls in the United States and abroad, to resist the wave of conservative trends inherent in current educational policies and to humanize the experiences of disenfranchised people.
printer-friendly