About the Publication

This open access, digital edition of Black Elegies: Meditations on the Art of Mourning was developed by Brown University Digital Publications in partnership with the MIT Press.

Authored by Kimberly Juanita Brown, inaugural director of the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life at Dartmouth College, Black Elegies is the second title of On Seeing, a publication series devoted to visual literacy. Publications in the On Seeing series foreground the political agency, critical insight, and social impact inscribed in visuality and representation. The first title in the series was Mortevivum: Photography and the Politics of the Visual.

In Black Elegies, Brown examines the form of the elegy and its unique capacity to convey the elongated grief borne of sustained racial violence. Structured around the sensorial, the book moves through sight, sound, and touch, offering a framework of mourning while black, within the parameters of contemporary artistic production. With her characteristic literary skill, Brown analyzes the work of major figures, including Toni Morrison, Carrie Mae Weems, Audre Lorde, and Marvin Gaye, among others.

This digital edition also includes a Community Engagement Toolkit, a guide to having open conversations about antiblackness, visual culture, and death.

Special thanks to Cosette Bruhns Alonso, Crystal Brusch, Jake Camara, Tara Dhaliwal, Allison Levy, Joe Mancino, and Holiday Shapiro.

Cover art: Brazilian capoeira performance, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, 2005. Photograph by the author.

Terms of Use

ISBN: 978-1-948459-10-5
DOI: doi.org/10.26300/BDP.BROWN.BLACK-ELEGIES

CITATION
Brown, K.J. (2025). Black Elegies. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.26300/BDP.BROWN.BLACK-ELEGIES

COPYRIGHT
© 2025 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
Licensed under the creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0,
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.