Trimiko Melancon

A scholar, cultural critic, and documentarian, Dr. Trimiko Melancon is an associate professor of English, African American Studies, and Women’s Studies at Loyola University, where she serves as the Director of African and African American Studies. The former Co-Director of Loyola’s Women’s Studies program, Professor Melancon is the award-winning author of Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (co-winner of the 2016 College Language Association Book Award) and co-editor of Black Female Sexualities with Joanne M. Braxton with a foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry. Her scholarly publications have appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, Reconstruction, The Black Scholar, and the Journal of Popular Culture. She has also written and provided commentary in public venues, such as Ms., Huffington Post, Elle, Wired, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Black Perspectives and the BBC World News, among others.

An inaugural visiting scholar and fellow at the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane University and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University, Professor Melancon has held numerous distinguished positions nationally and internationally: as the J. William Fulbright Scholar of American Literature and American Studies in Berlin, Germany, Mellon Mays University Fellow, Frederick Douglass Teaching Scholar, and a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellow. She has also received other prestigious awards, grants, and fellowships that have facilitated the continued support of her interdisciplinary research and teaching from the Andrew W. Mellon, Nellie Mae, Ford, and Ruth Landes/Reed Foundations, as well as the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright Commission. 

She earned her B.A. in English and M.A. and Ph.D. in African American Studies, as well as studied filmmaking with certification in documentary filmmaking—focusing on directing and producing the documentary, cinematography, sound production, and editing—at the New York Film Academy. Most recently, she has directed, written, and produced shorts, including I See You, a montage about race and difference during the age of Black Lives Matter; 1955 on civil rights icon Claudette Colvin; and Age of T on race and politics in the post-Obama age of Trump. Her teaching and scholarly interests and expertise lie primarily in African American and American literary and cultural studies; critical race, gender, and sexuality studies; black feminist theories and criticism; African American and Black German studies; and race, media, and digital as well as cultural production.