Brenda Umutoniwase (She/Her)Ph.D. Student (2023 Cohort)

Brenda Umutoniwase is a Ph.D. student in the Department of African American Studies at Emory University and a Woodruff Fellow. She graduated with an MA in Folklore Studies from University of California, Berkeley and a BSc in International Agriculture and Rural Development (with a minor in Africana Studies) from Cornell University. Her graduate research focuses on thinking about formulations of Blackness beyond the Middle passage epistemologies, particularly looking at temporal/geographic spaces in Africa that have no direct connection to the events of the middle passage. With her current focus on Rwanda, Brenda is studying sound and sonic practices as an alternative archive of colonial violence and race-making in order to think broadly about race and violence in African and diasporic contexts.