Kimberly McNair

Biography

Kimberly graduated from North Carolina State University in 2002 with a B.S. in Africana Studies and a B.A. in Chemistry. Before relocating to California for graduate school, she taught middle school and tutored students with learning difficulties. She also earned her M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. While serving the campus community in various roles, she has worked with grassroots and campus organizations focusing on academic outreach and equal access to education.

Currently a doctoral candidate, Kimberly’s research interest include Black Popular Culture, performance theory, visual culture, remix theory, and African American social movement history. Her dissertation focuses on the appropriation of radical iconography from the Black Power Era and the t-shirt trade industry. She contends that “wearing history” is a type of performance and suggests that rather than positioning t-shirt wearers and producers as participants in vacuous commodity culture, she approaches this phenomenon as a “practice of blackness” that extends and enlivens Black protest tradition by and beyond aesthetic means.