Dr Emily Brady is a social and cultural historian of the twentieth century United States, focussing on the intersection of identity, visuality and activism. She received her PhD in American Studies from the University of Nottingham in May 2021. She is interested in the activist function of photography within social movements and the ways in which photography, gender and race intersect. Dr Brady is currently preparing a monograph for the University of North Carolina Press, entitled: Let the World See What I See: Black Women Photographers from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Power.
Following a Teaching Fellowship at the University of Leeds (2021-2022), Dr Brady became the Broadbent Junior Research Fellow in American History at Rothermere American Institute and Christ Church College (2022-2025). Alongside developing publications, Dr Brady also organised the first UK exhibition of civil rights activist Maria Varela’s photography (April – May 2024). Dr Brady is also passionate about developing intersectional and interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches, previously working as the Project Lead of “Bridging the Resource Gap – American Studies Resources for 16-19.”
In her role as a Departmental Lecturer, Dr Brady teaches a variety of papers that pertain to the United States and the World. This includes the Special Subject on Race, Religion and Resistance in the United States: From Jim Crow to Civil Rights. She also regularly teaches on EWF12: The Making of Modern America, since 1863 and Sources and Historiography. Dr Brady has supervised a broad range of theses, including: the value of Black artists in UK auction houses (History of Art, BA); lived experiences of mixed-race women in Oxford University (Women and Gender Studies, MA); and children’s literature and 9/11 (History).
Publications:
“Forgotten Manuscript Series: Langston Hughes, London, 1938 by Eslanda Goode Robeson,” African American Review, vol. 57, no. 1 (2024): p. 1-14.
““Shutterbug?”: Black Women Photographers and the Politics of Self-Representation,” Panorama, vol. 9, no. 1 (2023).
““I Take the Pictures as I See Them”: Doris Derby as Womanist, Activist and Photographer in the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American Studies vol. 56, no. 4 (2022).
““I Like To Make Pictures of Children”: African American Women Photographers as Mothers, Protestors, and Businesswomen,” in Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez- Diego (eds.) Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation: Another Way of Knowing (Leuven University Press, 2022), pp. 125-144.
