• Aneeka Ayanna Henderson
• Amherst College

A native of Chicago, Professor Aneeka Ayanna Henderson is a writer and scholar working across African American print, sonic, and visual culture. Henderson earned her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is an Associate Professor at Amherst College in the American Studies Department, with affiliations in the English and Black Studies Departments. Her first book, Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture (University of North Carolina Press | Gender and American Culture Series) critically examines representations of courtship and marriage in fiction by Terry McMillan, Sister Souljah, Omar Tyree, and Eric Jerome Dickey as well as films such as The Best Man and Love and Basketball. Her research has been supported by the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship, and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences at Duke University. Her classes have been featured in the New York Times and Elle magazine and her work has appeared in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and in African American Culture and Society After Rodney King. Professor Henderson’s next monograph is an interdisciplinary study of visual culture and hip hop soul music.

Speaking In:

• Creative and Curatorial Playgrounds of Black Interiority