Biography

Lauren’s areas of interest include black popular culture (cinema, hip-hop, and digital culture), Black Studies, visual culture, and architectural theory. She is currently writing a book on hip-hop, architecture, and black spatial practice and has published writing on a wide variety of “art objects” including WorldStarHipHop.com, the videos from Jay-Z’s 4:44, Peter Eisenman’s architectural designs, and Meghan Markle’s wedding. Lauren is a founding member of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics, and is the co-Editor of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Black Scholar, Black Camera, Film Criticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Docalogue, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video and the edited collection Writing for Screen Media (Routledge, 2019). Lauren regularly teaches class on hip-hop visual culture, cinema’s spatial practice, and black cinemas.

Education

PhD, Georgia State University

MA, Emory University

BA, Villanova University