College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences > Academics > African and Black Diaspora Studies > Faculty > Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellowship

Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship

​​​​​​​Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow 2024-2025​​

Dr. Samantha Davis
Dr. Samantha Davis Ph.D. 

Dr. Samantha Davis is the 2024-2025 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University.  She holds a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Political Science. She is a political theorist with research interests in Black political thought, the history of political thought, and the 19th century especially in respect to theorizing the concepts of the state and freedom. Her work engages political theory, history, and comparative political theory across the African Diaspora. Her current work on the concept of abolition, the state and freedom in the Abolitionist movement, along with an article on the hermeneutics of Frederick Douglass’s political theory are forthcoming.


Dr. Davis teaches a range of courses in Black political thought inspired by he​​​​r research, including, African American political thought, the Abolitionist Movement: From Past to Present, and upcoming courses in the Black radical tradition, critical race theory, and Revolution and Rebellion in Black thought.

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2022-2024

Dr. Ashley Stone

Ashley Stone Ph.D.

Dr. Ashley Stone holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.A. in Sociology from DePaul University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Stone’s research and teaching areas include race, gender, sociological theory, and higher education. Her current research project examines the reproduction of knowledge by exploring the factors that contribute to the inclusion and exclusion of the scholarship of classical Black women social theorists in graduate-level sociology curricula. Her scholarship has been published in anthologies and peer-reviewed journals, including the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; Women, Gender, and Families of Color; and Sociological Inquiry.

In addition to her publications, Dr. Stone has been invited to speak on a variety of platforms about race, education, and non-violence. She has received numerous awards for her efforts in teaching, research, and social justice.

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2021-2022

Rita Mookerjee IBW

Rita Mookerjee Ph.D.

Rita Mookerjee holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Florida State University. Her research areas include contemporary Caribbean literature, gender theory, intersectional feminisms, and food studies. In 2020, she was a Fulbright fellow in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the co-founder of Honey Literary, a BIPOC and queer-centric journal of art and writing, and also serves as the Assistant Poetry Editor at Split Lip Magazine. Her critical work has been featured in American Poetry Review, the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. Rita is the author of two poetry collections, Becoming the Bronze Idol and Protection Rituals.

 

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2020-2021

Martin Boston

Martin L. Boston Ph.D.

Dr. Martin L. Boston holds a doctorate in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), and taught at UC San Diego and Washington State University before coming to DePaul.

Dr. Boston's research and teaching interests are in South Africa, exile, cultural producers and production, pan-Africanism, Black internationalism, and comparative racial politics and history. He is particularly interested in South Africa's exile period (1960-1994), US-South African comparative history, apartheid and segregation, and Black South African and Black American cultural producers.

His research has received awards from a number of University of California affiliated academic sources including the prestigious University of California Office of the President (UCOP) 2017-2018 Dissertation Year Fellowship, the International Institute, the Institute of Arts and Humanities, and the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California. Dr. Boston is currently working on a book manuscript titled, “Be(Long)ing: South African Cultural Producers and the Development of a Pan-African Exilic Consciousness During an Era of Exile."

 After leaving ABD and DePaul, Dr. Boston went to Sacremento State University as an Assistant Professor in Pan-African Studies and Ethnic Studies. 

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2018-2020

Dr. Evan Poe Johnson

Evan (Poe) Johnson Ph.D.

Dr. Evan “Poe" Johnson holds a BFA in Writing for Film and Television from the University of the Arts, an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College, and a Ph.D. in Aesthetic Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. He has previously been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, an Edith O’Donnell Graduate Fellow, and UT Dallas ArtSci Graduate Fellow. His research synthesizes critical race theories, Afro-Pessimism, film studies, and new media theory to bring to the fore the connections between blackness, participatory fan cultures, and popular culture artifacts. His work has been published in national and international venues, such as the Phoenix Papers, Films for the Feminist Classroom, and #Nodos: Una Adventura Intelectual que Explora las Fronteras Entre los Diferentes Ambitos del Conocimiento.

Dr. Johnson teaches classes on film, popular culture the history of visual representations of race, and black aesthetic traditions. His research examines the evolution of representations race and gender in American popular culture and their intersections with participatory fan cultures.

 After leaving ABD and DePaul, Dr. Johnson went to Drew University as the Assistant Teaching Professor in the Media and Communication Studies Program. 

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2017-2018

Dr. Jalylah Burrell

Jalylah Burrell Ph.D.

Dr. Jalylah Burrell received her Bachelor’s degree from Spelman College, an MA from New York University in Africana Studies and an MPhil from Yale, where she also received her PhD in African American and American Studies. She has also been music critic, arts & entertainment report and columnist for outlets such as the Village Voice (NY), Vibe Magazine, Portland Mercury and The Fader, among others.
 
Dr. Burrell is a scholar of Black literature, music and popular culture, concentrating on Black feminism, humor and hip-hop culture. Burrell is at work on two books — Capacity for Laughter: Black Women and the American Comedic Tradition and Wrong Ways: The Radical Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. Her research and teaching interests include comedy, music studies, media studies, Black feminist and gender studies, and Black popular culture more generally. 

After completing her time in DePaul’s Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies, she held a fellowship at Rice University. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at San Jose State University. 

About Ida B. Wells Postdoctoral Fellow 2015-2017

Dr. Alicia Garcia

Alyssa Garcia Ph.D.

Dr. Alyssa Garcia received her BA in Cross-Cultural Psychology from Brown University and earned her Master’s and PhD in Anthropology from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and research interests include Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Ethnic-Latina/o Studies, Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and Feminist Ethnography. Dr. Garcia’s research examines intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in Cuba through an analysis of discourses of sex-work and the body.

Her manuscript, “Moral Discourses, Regulated Bodies: Sex, the State, and Subjectivity in Cuba,” is a historically grounded ethnography that traces chronologically the public supervision and state regulation of black female bodies in Cuba. Dr. Garcia’s more recent project investigates the secondary migrations of the Dominican community in the state of Pennsylvania. Her selected publications include: Continuous Moral Economies: The State Regulation of Bodies and Sex-Work in Cuba, Sexualities (2010); Situating Race, Navigating Belonging: Mapping Afro-Cuban Identities in the U.S., Latina/o Research Review (2009); and Counter-Stories of Race and Gender: Situating the Experiences of Latinas in the Academy, Latino Studies Journal (2005). 

After her term as Ida B. Wells-Barnett Fellow was completed, Dr. Garcia moved on to Northwestern University where she is Assistant Professor of Instruction in Gender & Sexuality Studies and Adviser in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences.

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