Africana Studies / Rites and Reason Theatre

zuri arman is ante-anti-genre thinker, maker, writer, and cultural organizer from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their dissertation project, entitled Towards a Criteria of Dark Africana, identifies and seeks to rupture an imperial pattern of thought endemic to western culture called “refortification,” which they argue disciplines the inventive capacities of black studies practitioners. This project contributes to an emerging intellectual constellation referred to as dark black study/ies composed of heretical scholars thinking with and through the negativity of blackness. Additionally, zuri’s research interests include black critical theory, cultural theory and criticism, critical gender and sexuality studies, intellectual history, black political thought, and black spiritualities. zuri’s poetry and prose is forthcoming or featured in the CLR James Journal, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, a special issue of Interviewing the Caribbean ed. by Carole Boyce Davies, Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies (PM Press), Burnaway Magazine of Contemporary Art from the South, Collision Literary Magazine, and Rock the Bells. zuri has also been invited to present their art and research on black cultural and intellectual production at universities and galleries in the United States and Canada, including Yale University, the University at Buffalo, York University, and Gallery Gachet. Finally, zuri is the co-founder and editor of (de)cypher: dark notes on the culture, a journal and porous (un)safe thought-space situated at the crossroads of politics, art, and black studies (website: cypheringwhile.black; instagram: @darkdecypher). In their free time, zuri enjoys correctly guessing others’ astrology signs, rapturous laughter, and asking ecstatic questions to which there is no sens(i/a)ble answer or solution.