Keith Jones

Keith Jones is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His work bridges literary scholarship and creative practice, focusing on the cultural production of African and African-descended peoples within the contexts of coloniality and racial capitalism. He approaches the classroom as a space of shared, precise, convivial learning, connecting theoretical frameworks with lived experiences.

Education Background:

• PhD in English from Duke University
• MA in English from California State University Long Beach
• BA in Community Studies from University of California Santa Cruz

Dr. Jones's research explores the intersections of black diaspora studies, post-colonial theory, and decolonial thought across multiple disciplines including Anglophone and African diasporic literatures, European- and African-descended literatures of the United States and the Americas, native studies, white settler colonialism, gender and queer studies, poetry and poetics, cultural studies, and critical theory. His scholarship demonstrates how marginalized communities create alternative narratives that challenge dominant historical accounts through innovative literary forms.

His creative and scholarly output reveals consistent engagement with decolonial approaches to literature and cultural production. Jones has published numerous poetry chapbooks and critical essays that examine how Afro-diasporic writers innovate historical fiction forms and develop what Edouard Glissant calls 'planetary consciousness' to move beyond Euro-modernity's frameworks. His work connects literary form with political resistance and social transformation.

Scientific Awards:

• Finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Single Poem Broadside Prize
• Finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Chapbook Prize
• Finalist for the 2016 Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origins Literary Award
• Finalist for the 1913 Prize for 1st Books (2016)
• Finalist for the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize

Dr. Jones actively contributes to academic and community conversations about racial justice, decolonial pedagogy, and black studies through numerous invited talks, panels, and poetry readings. His presentations address topics including Juneteenth, racial justice in higher education, the criminalization of Black life, and the intersections of poetry and social justice movements. He has presented at Harvard University, Smith College, the Chautauqua Institute Writing Festival, and community organizations including Call It Out Boston.

Currently, Dr. Jones is developing two major research projects: 'Sentenced to the World: Late-Style and Paraliterary Forms in U.S. Fiction, 1975-1987,' which examines innovations in historical fiction by Afro-diasporic writers, and 'Figurations of the Baroque: Coloniality, Vernacularity, and Historicity in Contemporary Afro-Diasporic Thought,' which traces contemporary Afro-diasporic creators' development of alternative narrative forms that move beyond frameworks predicated on white settler colonialism.