I am an art historian, organizer, and critic living in Toronto, Ontario. I am an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and received my PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY, in 2022. My writings have been published or are forthcoming in The Art Bulletin, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, NKA: Journal of the Contemporary African Art, and Smarthistory. Fellowships from the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The American Council of Learned Societies and the Getty Research Center have supported my research.

As a specialist in the art of African Diaspora in North America, I study histories of Black radicalism and their impact on the discipline of art history. I am particularly interested in questions of methodology and historiography, looking to Black Studies to find alternatives to art history’s stifling reliance on the logics and values of whiteness. I am currently at work on two book-length projects: an art historical study of 1960s Harlem and a monograph on the artist and organizer Benny Andrews.

A broad set of political investments informs my academic commitments, and I frequently look to public intellectuals on the socialist Left for help defining the political stakes of my art historical work. Figures like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Astra Taylor, Robin D.G. Kelley, Miriam Kaba, Sarah Jaffe, Naomi Klein, and Daniel Denvir have taught me to think critically about the wide-scale ravages of capitalism (from slavery to mass incarceration, climate change to genocide) and to think broadly about the forms political change can take. I study art to get at complexities simplified by a liberal worldview, where struggles are siloed, individualism is rewarded, and reform is privileged above all else. I believe art helps us see beyond what is “practical” or even "imaginable” and thus is critical in helping those who seek alternatives to the status quo to see and, therefore, imagine (and organize and build) otherwise.

Whenever possible, I try to connect my research with grassroots political struggles within and beyond academia. I am a member of Faculty for Palestine and active in the University of Toronto Faculty Association. From 2017 to 2022, I was a delegate of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents faculty, staff, and students at CUNY. I also served as chapter chair and vice chair during this time, working with colleagues across the university to fight for public higher education in New York, the city where I was born and raised.

Maya Harakawa