BOOKS
Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law. Forthcoming.
Vision & Justice. New York: One World/Random House, Forthcoming, 2025.
The Unseen Truth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2024.
EDITED COLLECTIONS
Vision & Justice: A Civic Curriculum. New York: Aperture, April 2019.
“Vision & Justice” Special Issue, Aperture 223 (2016).
ARTICLES, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS [Peer-Reviewed]
“The Arena of Suspension: Carrie Mae Weems, Bryan Stevenson, and the “Ground” in the Stand Your Ground Law Era.” in Law and Literature, no. 34 (2022): 1-32. (PDF)
“Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” in “Blackness” Special Issue, Art Journal 79, no. 4 (2020): 92-113. (PDF)
“The Insistent Reveal: Louis Agassiz, Joseph T. Zealy, Carrie Mae Weems, and the Politics of Undress in the Photography of Racial Science,” in I. Barbash, J. Stauffer, and D. Willis, eds., To Make Their Way in the World: A New History of African Americans Revealed Through Nineteenth-Century Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: Aperture / Peabody Museum Press, 2020. (PDF)
“African American Abstraction,” in Eddie Chambers, ed., The Routledge Companion to African American Art. New York and London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 159-173. (PDF)
“The Future Real Conditional: Race and Monuments in the United States,” October 165 (2018): 93-99.
“The Art of Negotiation,” in Dawoud Bey, ed., Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply: Photographs, 1975-2016, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. [TIME Magazine's Best Photo Books title of 2018.]
“Love Visual: A Conversation with Haile Gerima,” Callaloo, no. 3 (2013): 634-657.
“Unhomed Geographies: The Paintings of Julie Mehretu,” Callaloo, no. 1 (2010): 219-22.
“How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,” Nka, no. 22/23 (2008): 206-7. [Book Review]
ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS
Just Portraiture: A Legend at 100,” in Avedon 100. New York: Gagosian, 2023. (PDF)
“The Vision and Justice Project,” in K. Drew and J. Wortham, eds., Black Futures. New York: One World, 2020.
“Where Are The Photos of People Dying of Covid?” The New York Times, May 1, 2020.
“The Racial Bias Built into Photography,” New York Times, April 25, 2019.
“Michelle Obama: Representational Justice,” in The Meaning of Michelle. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. [Reviewed in the New York Times and NPR’s “Here and Now”.]
“Which is the Real Confederate Flag?” New York Times, June 25, 2017, A16.
“Foreword,” in Carrie Mae Weems: The Kitchen Table Series. New York: Matsumoto Editions, 2016. [Selected as one of the “Best Art Books of 2016,” in the New York Times.]
“The Other Us,” Art in America, no. 5 (2016): 49-52. [Book Review, Kobena Mercer, Travel and See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since the 1980s. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016].
“Of Two Minds: ‘Powers of Two’ by Joshua Wolf Shenk,” New York Times, August 22, 2014.
“The Hidden Past of Sochi,” The New Yorker, February 19, 2014.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE ESSAYS
“Introduction,” in Philip Brookman, ed., Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2018. [New York Times’ Best Photo Books of 2018]
“Introduction,” in Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal. New York: Aperture, 2018.
“Henry Taylor: The Impossible Present,” in Henry Taylor. New York: Rizzoli, 2018.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Lyle Ashton Harris: The Ektachrome Archive. New York: Aperture, 2017.
“Mark Bradford: The Art of Productive Dissent,” in C. Bedford and K. Siegel, eds., Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day, New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2017.
“Whitfield Lovell: A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Whitfield Lovell: KIN. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2016.
Race, Love, and Labor: New Work from the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-In-Residency Program, exh. cat. New York: State University of New York Press, 2014.
“Celebration and Critique,” in Kehinde Wiley. New York: Rizzoli, 2012.
“Mickalene Thomas: On Beauty,” in Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe. exh. cat. Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2012.
Romare Bearden: Idea to Realization. New York: D.C. Moore Gallery, 2011.
“Wangechi Mutu,” in Re: Collection: Selected Works from The Studio Museum in Harlem. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2010.
Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco, The Dissolve: The SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial, exh. cat. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2010.
“A Reverence for Ordinary People,” in Mercy, Patience and Destiny: The Women of Whitfield Lovell’s Tableaux. Atlanta: Woodruff Arts Center and The Savannah College of Art and Design, 2009.
“Freedom Beyond Fort Monroe,” in Collier Schorr ed. Freeway Balconies, exh. cat. New York: Distributed Art Publishers and the Guggenheim Museum, 2008.
“Incendiary Acts,” in Cassandra Coblentz ed. Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up, exh. cat. Scottsdale, AZ: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Greg Miller & Co., 2008.
“American Idols,” in Deborah Willis ed., Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraiture from 1865 to the Present, exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2007.
“Mark Bradford: The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” in Street Level, exh. cat. Durham, NC: Duke University Press / The Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2007.
“Boris Achour,” Notre Histoire: Une Scène Artistique Française Émergent, exh. cat. Paris: Palais du Toyko, 2006.
“Zoe Charlton,” in Thelma Golden ed., Frequency, exh. cat. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2005.