Sara M. Collins

Sara is a PhD candidate in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation focuses on the development of visual technologies during the nineteenth-century and the transformation of visual methods into areas for black subjugation. In contrast to this practice, Sara’s studies the intervention of black feminism in the history of American visual culture, such as, the cartes de visite of Sojourner Truth. Sara argues that Truth’s approach towards photography establishes Truth as an early philosopher of photography. Using Truth’s practice of photography as a flashpoint for black resistance, Sara’s dissertation project studies the role of legal and cultural institutions. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she participated in an intensive research institute hosted by the City University of New York on the visual culture of the Civil War. Her academic background includes Art History and Media Studies, both from the Pratt Institute, and her writing has been published in a variety of formats. Sara has interviewed the artist Paul Chan about his staging of Waiting for Godot for a special issue on Samuel Beckett, and participated in Burnaway’s summer program where she wrote about the mud sculptures of the self-taught artist, Juanita Rogers.