Kinitra Brooks

Biography

Kinitra Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University and the Director of Graduate Programs in English. Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture as seen in past columns for The Root on “The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country” and her multiple visits as a commentator on NPR’s 1A.

As a pop educator and scholar, Dr. Brooks uses horror to study the depictions of marginalized groups and portrayals of the Conjure Woman in horror and science fiction. Her expertise is part of the 2023 documentary “Afrofantastic: The Transformative World of Afrofuturism” featured on Public Broadcasting Service stations and the online PBS streaming app.

In process projects include an interdisciplinary anthology about Beyoncé’s Renaissance album that explores Black queerness and sexuality and a graphic novel called Red Dirt Witch about a Conjure Woman who helps with the Civil Rights Movement.

Brooks co-edited The Lemonade Reader (Routledge 2019), an interdisciplinary collection that explores the nuances of Beyoncé’s 2016 audiovisual project, Lemonade. Her two other books are 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.

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Dr. Brooks served as the Advancing Equity Through Research Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she served as the Visiting Associate Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and African American Religions in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School.