Andrene M. Taylor, Ph.D. is a scholar, writer, and producer. She specializes in dramatic storytelling, creativity/transformational creativity, and Black feminism.

EDUCATION

Howard University
Ph.D. in English
MA in English

The College of New Jersey
BA in English and Secondary English Education

SELECT PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2012- present
Principal Creative Director, Zuri Productions, Washington, DC

2012- present

Executive Director, President, Zuri Works, Washington, DC

2019- 2022
Professorial Lecturer, American University, Washington, DC

African American and African Diaspora Studies, School of Global Studies, and School of International Service,

SELECT GRANTS, AWARDS, HONORS

2021

Mastercard Management Grant

2020

Mastercard Foundation Innovation Award

2019

Teacher of the Year, Montgomery College 

2015

DC Commission of Arts and Humanities Fellow

2013

DC Commission on Arts and Humanities Fellow

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

  • “Signifying ‘Black’ Sexuality in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora.” Nostalgia or Perversion: Gothic Rewriting from the Victorian Age until the Present Day. Isabella van Elferen, Ed. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  • “Ayub  Khan-Din”  in Twenty-First- Century  ‘Black’  British  Writers, Volume 347 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit: Gale 2009

  • “Black British Writing: ‘Hitting Up Against’ a Tradition of Revolutionary Poetics.” in ‘Black’ British Aesthetics Today. R. Victoria Arana, Ed. New Castle: UK, 2007.

  • “Our Patriarchal Society Doesn’t Always Tell The Stories of Black Women.” Undefeated, ESPN. July 22, 2020.

  • “Evaluating Black Life through a Different Lens in the Midst of COVID-19, Civil Unrest.” Undefeated, ESPN. June 29, 2020.

  • “5 Ways Trump Liberated Us All from the Myth of American Exceptionalism.” Everyday Feminism, December 2016.

SELECT PROJECTS

  • PBS, Ready to Learn: Race and Education, is a video production project that aims to bring more race-conscious approaches to race and education. The learning platform incorporates videos and animation exploring race-conscious themes and puts forth a way to include traditional African American literature in “anti-racist” teaching and activism.

  • The Kipaji Lab, is a creative transformational personal and professional development for Black creatives. The practical methodologies of the program creates permanent shifts in the ways that creatives think, act, and create so that achieve heighten performance in creating and the business of creating.

  • Black in Space powered by Makers Lab an Afrofuturist, cybermedia series of virtual experiences that combines literature, visual arts, music, video production, and grassroots organizing to create a safe virtual space that connects Black people, centers Black queers, and includes all genders, sexualities, and borders to imagine Black liberation, connection, and joy.

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

  • “Skills for the Virtual Workplace: Practice Humanity,” American University Master of Science in Measurement and Evaluation, Washington, DC 2020

  • “Social Inclusion, Race, Gender, and Feminism” Intersectionality in Development Projects and Beyond, A Talk with Ann-Murray A. Brown The Hague Area via LinkedIn, 2020

  • “Spirituality at the Intersection of Race: Connecting to Do the Work That Matters,” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training for Soul Sisters Retreat, Zoom California, July 24, 2020

  • “From Listening to Action: SPExS Townhall on Race.” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training, School of Professional and Extended Studies, American University, via Zoom, June 3, 2020

  • “Being and Teaching at the Intersections,” Inclusivity in the Classroom. Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative, via Zoom, Washington, DC. June 6, 2020

  • “Re-Educating the American Eater: Food, Identity, and Politics,” An Intercultural Understanding Talk, American University, November 2019

  • “Disrupting Institutions from Within,” Words, Beats, and Life Conversations, Washington, DC, 2018

  • “A Day in the Life: Patient Experience,” Brookings Institute MEDTalk, Washington, DC 2014

  • “The Exposures Project: Words,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 2014

  • “Black Women’s Health: Natural Hair as Protest,” Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington, DC, 2013

  • “It’ll Grow Back: Natural Hair and Cancer Survival,” Smith Center, Washington, DC 2012

  • “Jolie-laide (Beautiful-Ugly) Sexual Aesthetics: How Black Women Writers Write Desire,” Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2008

  • “Black British Writing: In the Tradition of Revolutionary Poetics,” Black British Aesthetics Today! Howard University Symposium, Washington, DC, 2006

  • “Sexual Haunting: Using the Gothic to (Re)-Writing “Black” Sex in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora and Eva’s Man,” International Interdisciplinary Gothic Conference, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, 2005


 

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

— TONI MORRISON, BELOVED