Maya Harakawa

Assistant Professor, Art History

Campus

Cross-Appointments

Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies
Center for the Study of the United States

Areas of Interest

  • Art History
  • Art of African Diaspora in North America
  • Black radicalism and their impact on the discipline of art history
  • Anti-racism

Biography

Maya Harakawa (she/her) is an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art of the African Diaspora. In her research and teaching, she focuses on the relationship between art and politics, with a particular interest in questions related to methodology and historiography. Her work challenges assumptions around what constitutes “radicalism” or “vanguardism” in Art History, using lessons derived from Black Studies to challenge the discipline’s normative values, particularly their continued investments in whiteness. The recipient of fellowships from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, she is currently writing a monograph on art and Harlem in the 1960s.  

Education

PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY