Shawn Michelle Smith

Critical Race Theory and Visual Culture Fellow

09/05/2022–06/17/2023

Shawn Michelle Smith is professor of visual and critical studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois. She studies the history and theory of photography and gender and race in visual culture. Smith has published seven books, including American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton University Press, 1999), Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture (Duke University Press, 2004), and the award-winning titles At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen (Duke University Press, 2013) and Photographic Returns: Racial Justice and the Time of Photography (Duke University Press, 2020). Her project at the Clark, titled Environmental Double Consciousness, approaches environmental catastrophe through the lens of critical race studies and is also supported by a 2022 Guggenheim fellowship.