About
“Black life, then, cannot be reduced to subjection. How Black people make inroads to living beyond the state of subjection is also glimpsed in the archives in spite of the registers of terror that fill assembled documents.”
Senyonga (2022)
Portrait by Texas Isaiah
Mary Senyonga (she/her(s)) is an Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Women’s and Gender Studies at Sacramento State University. Her research investigates racial violences in the university, Black student organizing, and the Black fat figure in society. Privileging Black Feminisms and Critical Race Theory, she illuminates the methods that sustain systemic inequity while at the same time centering and celebrating Black people’s disruptions to this condition. She earned a PhD and MA in Social Sciences and Comparative Education - Race and Ethnic Studies from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a BA in Psychology from Occidental College.
She is currently at work on an extensive project focusing on 1) the impact of the University of California (UC) system on the state of California through archival research and 2) Black women students who attended UCLA during Angela Davis’s dismissal and engaged in varied organizing tactics for change.