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.