John Brooks is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts. His research and teaching interests include Black creative expression from the 19th century to the present, radical and experimental aesthetics, performance studies, and the poetics of the Afrofuture. He is the author of The Racial Unfamiliar: Illegibility in Black Literature and Culture (Columbia University Press, "Literature Now" series, 2022). His published articles have appeared in PMLA, American Quarterly, African American Review, J:19, and blogs for Critical Inquiry and Columbia University Press. His work has been supported by the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University and the Department of English at Indiana University.