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Amanda Smith

Profile picture for Amanda Smith

Contact Information

208 Coble Hall
Coordinator for Academic Programs

Biography

Amanda Smith is the Academic Coordinator of the European Union Center and a Faculty Affiliate of the Women & Gender in Global Perspectives Program here at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She recently defended her thesis entitled "21st Century Black Beauty Resistance: Collectivism, Individuality, and In/Visibility in Black French Women's Writing."

As a scholar-activist and Black woman of mixed origins, Amanda is deeply passionate about her work on Black women, aesthetics, and power. She sees global Black collectivism as the key to global Black liberation. She is the author of a forthcoming publication in Études Francophones entitled "Shifting the Peripheries: Confluent Corporealities in a Radical French Afrofeminist Manifesto." Her current research engages Afrocentric women-centered perspectives on Black women’s contemporary written representations of themselves and their worlds. Her work demonstrates Black women’s ability to decenter the white male gaze and the consequent possibilities of Black beauty, joy, creativity, and ultimately Black life they create.

 

Research Interests

Black France & Black Paris

African-American Studies

Global Black and African Diaspora Studies

Mis/representations of the Black Female Body

Function of Hair in Identity Performance, Othering, and Conceptions of Identity

Education

Ph.D. in French Studies to be conferred in Spring 2024. 

M.A. in French Literature and Pedagogy, University of Cincinnati;

B.A. in French, University of Cincinnati

A.A. in Liberal Arts, University of Cincinnati,

Cert. in Business French

Courses Taught

FR 101: Elementary French I

FR 102: Elementary French II

FR 103: Elementary French III

LAS 399: Leadership & Professional Development

FR 212: Introduction to Cultural Analysis