Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Camille Wise is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Africana Studies. Her research interests include body modification, archival studies, beauty cultures, Black feminisms, digital technologies, and queer studies. She is interested in questions about how members of the Black diaspora use body modification and technology, both together and independently, to shape identities. Through a Black feminist practice, her dissertation is a multigenerational project which interrogates how 20th- and 21st-century Black femmes (dis)engage with makeup to negotiate the visual image of the Black femme in the United States. Before coming to Brown University, she earned a B.A. in Africana Studies and Comparative World Literature from California State University, Long Beach, followed by an M.A. in American Studies from California State University, Fullerton. Her work continues to be shaped and informed by her past experience working in the beauty industry and enrollment in cosmetology school.