Africana Studies / Rites and Reason Theatre

Melanie White earned her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She holds an M.A in African and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and was awarded a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in 2016. Her research interests include Black social movements in Central America and the Caribbean, Afro-Nicaraguan women's cultural politics, and Black diasporic feminisms. Currently, her research considers the political implications of Afro-Nicaraguan women's visual art in the contest of the struggle for autonomy on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.