Jasmine Nichole Cobb on New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair

Conversations in Atlantic Theory

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, as well as a co-director of the “From Slavery to Freedom” (FS2F) Franklin Humanities Lab. A scholar of black cultural production and visual representation, Cobb is the author of two monographs, Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015) and New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke UP 2022). She is the editor for African American Literature in Transition, 1800-1830 (Cambridge UP 2021) and she has written essays for Public Culture, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, and American Literary History. In this conversation, we discuss her latest monograph, New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair reveals the various ways that people of African descent forge new relationships to the body, public space, and visual culture through the embrace of Black hair.