Lauren M. Cramer

Assistant Professor
Innis College, IN-317E, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5

Biography

Lauren’s work focuses on the aesthetics of blackness and popular culture. She is currently writing a book on hip-hop visual culture and black spatial practice and has published writing on a wide variety of “art objects” including WorldStarHipHop.com, the videos from Jay-Z’s 4:44, Peter Eisenman’s architectural designs, and Meghan Markle’s wedding. Lauren is a founding member of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics, and is the co-Editor of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (Duke University Press). Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Black Scholar, Black Screen Media Camera, Film Criticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Docalogue and the edited collection Writing for Screen Media (Routledge, 2019). 

Special Issues of Journals Edited

Co-Edited with Alessandra Raengo. “Modes of Black Liquidity: Music Video as Black Art.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, In Focus, (Winter 2020)

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

with Alessandra Raengo, “There is No Form in the Middle: Kevin Everson’s Massive Abstractions,” liquid blackness journal of aesthetics and black studies 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021)

“For the Culture, For the Future: Keeping Black Time in Jay-Z’s 4:44” in Jay-Z special section ed. Stephanie Li, Black Camera 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019)

“A ‘Very Black Project’: A Method for Digital Visual Culture” in Writing About Screen Media, edited by Lisa Patti. London: Routledge, August 2019.

“Icons of Catastrophe: Diagramming Blackness in Kahlil Joseph’s Until the Quiet Comes liquid blackness Volume 3: Issue 7, (October 2017) 

Reviews and Other Writing

“Talking About Practice: Samantha Sheppard’s Sporting Blackness,” LA Review of Books (September 29, 2020). 

“The Black See,” Docalogue (December 2021)

“Revival: Lauren Cramer Reviews Arthur Jafa’s ‘Air Above Mountains, Unknown Pleasures’ At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise” liquid blackness (July 1, 2018) 

“Spotlight, Moonlight... The New Grammar of Black Visual Culture” MediaCommons (May 2, 2018) – Invited Contributor 

Passing Through: A Methodology for Close Analysis” liquid blackness Volume 2: Issue 5, “Passing Through Film” (September 2015): 40-49. 

Book Reviews

Pulse of the People: Political Rap Music and Black Politics by Lakeyta M. Bonnette. Journal of African American History 102, no. 2 (Spring 2017)

Education

PhD, Georgia State University
MA, Emory University
BA, Villanova University

Awards