Julius B. Fleming Jr.

Julius B. Fleming, Jr. earned a PhD in English, and a graduate certificate in Africana studies. Specializing in Afro-diasporic literatures and cultures, he has particular interests in performance studies, black political culture, diaspora, and colonialism, especially where they intersect with race, gender, and sexuality. Fleming is the author of Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation (NYU Press 2022). This book reconsiders the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of black theatre. It argues that black theatrical performance—much like television and photography—was a vital technology of civil rights activism, and a crucial site of black artistic and cultural production.

Fleming’s work appears in journals like American Literature, American Literary History, South Atlantic Quarterly, Callaloo, and The James Baldwin Review. He has served as Associate Editor of both Callaloo and Black Perspectives, and now serves on the Editorial Board of Southern Cultures.

Professor Fleming is currently at work on two new book projects: one that explores the relationship between the speculative and the new geographies of empire and colonialism and the other that examines the history of black nightlife.