Adrienne Adams

Born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Adrienne Adams (they/them) is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity. Their scholarship and event programming operates at the nexus of black aesthetics, elemental and environmental media studies, and science/technology studies.

Their dissertation, Black Obsolescence: Sex, Plastic, and the Affective Ruse of Recording Technology, examines the mechanics of plastic-based technologies—VHS tapes, the xerox machine, reel to reel tape recorder, cassette tape—alongside black diasporic feminist, queer, and intersex artistic production. In doing so, they seek to theorize how obsolescence and use operate in light of decaying technology and blackness’ interminable availabilty/violation under modernity.

Adams’ work has earned national fellowships through the Ford Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Point Foundation, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Imagining America, and HASTAC. Their publications appear or are forthcoming in GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, American Quarterly, the Oxford African American Studies Center, and Spit and Spider Press.

They have programmed events at 198 Contemporary Art & Learning in London, Academy Museum of Motion Picture, California African American Museum, City of West Hollywood, Occidental College, and Whitney Museum of American Art. They have also consulted for the Guggenheim Museums, Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, House of AWT, That Dance Show, among others. 

• B.A. Occidental College, 5/2017