Jayna Brown is professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute. She earned her PhD in American Studies at Yale University. As well as numerous essays, Brown is the author of two books, both published by Duke University Press: Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern and her most recent, Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds. Brown is coeditor of the journal Social Text and has also been a contributing journalist for NPR's music programming. Her areas of research and specialization include, speculative fictions, music, black expressive cultures, black queer and feminist studies, and our changing media landscape.