Feminist Studies
<p>Amoni Thompson is a PhD student in the Feminist Studies program at UC Santa Barbara. As a UNCF/Mellon-Mays Fellow, she graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Spelman College with a BA in Comparative Women's Studies and a minor in Creative Writing. Upon graduating from Spelman College, she worked as the Women and Human Rights Intern for a nonprofit organization in Atlanta, GA called Women Engaged. She assisted the executive director with research, writing, publishing, and editing articles based on current women’s/human rights issues. She also worked part time as an afterschool educator in the West End Neighborhood of Atlanta, GA serving primarily elementary-aged youth. Amoni currently works as a graduate mentor with the Black Student Engagement Program as part of the Black Resource Committee at UCSB. She also serves as the Vice President of the Black Graduate Students Association. Her research examines the cultural representations of Black girl artists in the U.S. South to understand how Black girls create geographies of pleasure and joy. It examines the ways spatial politics impact how Black girls in the South use expressive culture as a tool to enact their own visions of freedom and pleasure. Her work is interested how we can further understand what it means to be Black and southern in this post-civil rights era through the experience of Black girls.</p>