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Christen A. Smith

Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin

Christen A. Smith is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. She researches gendered anti-Black state violence and Black community responses to it in Brazil and the Americas. Her current research project, "Sequelae," examines the lingering, deadly impact of police violence on black women in Brazil and the U.S. Her other research interests include transnational anti-Black police violence, Black liberation struggles, the paradox of Black citizenship and the dialectic between the enjoyment of Black culture and the killing of Black people. Her book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil uses the lens of performance to examine the immediate and long-term impact of police violence on Black people in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, and the grassroots struggle against police violence.

Experience

  • –present
    Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin
  • 2016–present
    Associate Professor, University of Texas