Rikki Byrd, Ph.D.

Black Curatorial Thought (Graduate)

Spring 2026, The University of Texas at Austin

Inspired by contemporary artist Torkwase Dyson’s concept “Black compositional thought,” which she uses in her practice to "connect spatial histories of Black liberation," this course will draw on a genealogy of curatorial praxis and theory by scholars, artists, and curators across the African diaspora who critique, expand, and imagine interventions of space and display within and outside of museums. Looking across a host of historical, arts, cultural, private, and public sites, such as the Atlantic ocean, plantation, public housing, parks, and museums, this course will assess how African diasporic approaches to space have and can inform curatorial concepts and ethics. Grounded in critical texts and field-defining exhibitions from the twentieth century to the present, students will discuss and analyze works by W.E.B. Du Bois, David Driskell, bell hooks, Thelma Golden, Okwui Enwezor, Nicole Fleetwood, and Koyo Kouoh, among others. The course will draw on the fields of Black studies, art history, visual culture, museum studies, and curatorial studies, and assignments will include presentations, curatorial proposals, and case studies to prepare students for post-graduate careers within academia, arts, and cultural institutions. This course is especially designed for students with a demonstrated interest in the curatorial field, and artists who are interested in exhibitions as a part of their practice.

Introduction to Black Fashion Studies

Spring 2026, The University of Texas at Austin

Emerging out of the interdisciplinary field of fashion studies, Black Fashion Studies is a sub-discipline of critique and innovation, advancing and disrupting the fashion historical canon, while also introducing innovative methods, approaches, and materials to consider the intersection of Black lived experience and self-fashioning. Black Fashion Studies allows us to return to histories with a refreshing lens to reconsider our understanding of Black historical moments such as the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, Black studies concepts such as the politics of respectability, and cultural phenomena from jazz to hip hop. This course will introduce students to primary texts and objects in the sub-discipline. The course considers Black fashion designers and major style histories such as the zoot suit, as well as fashion’s impact on Black visual culture, visual art, and popular culture more broadly. Students will learn and apply the methods, approaches, histories, and theories emerging from Black Fashion Studies across formal writing prompts, as well as creative assignments. Prominent figures, histories, and objects discussed include Elizabeth Keckley, Ann Lowe, Patrick Kelly, and Kerby-Jean Raymond; visual and performance artists, such as Lorraine O’Grady, Faith Ringgold, and Troy Montes-Mitchie; and, Black diasporic history, such as dandyism. Overall, the class encourages students' understanding of the intersection of Black style, politics, and culture. 

The Arts of Hip Hop

Spring/Fall 2025, The University of Texas at Austin

In 2023, museums, libraries, and various media celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop. Coming of age in the Bronx during a back-to-school block party organized by siblings DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell, the musical genre that began with turntables, breakdancing, graffiti, Kangol hats, and Adidas has morphed into a cultural phenomenon touching continents, industries, and mediums, including visual culture and art history. This course will explore the latter two poles. Each week will be named after a song lyric, which will guide students’ exploration of themes such as politics, power, gender and sexuality, and locality from the East and West coasts to the Dirty South and Midwest. In addition to analyzing works by artists, such as Jean Michel-Basquiat, Hank Willis Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, students will also explore album covers, magazines, music videos, and other material culture to expand their understanding of how the visual culture of hip hop can be used to assess the history and representational politics of the Black diaspora. 

Black Fashioning

Fall 2022, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

In the introduction to her co-edited book African Dress: Fashion, Agency, and Performance, anthropologist Karen Tranberg Hansen describes fashioning and fashionability as “the performative quality of dress practice. To speak of fashionability entails shifting the focus from the garments onto practices and situations of which they are part.” This course draws on Tranberg Hansen’s definition and explores how Black historical and contemporary figures, visual artists, scholars, filmmakers and more draw on textiles, clothing and other forms of adornment as a means of resistance, fugitivity, critique, celebration, respectability, autonomy, agency and more. From the clandestine styling practices of Ellen Craft, who adorned herself in men’s clothing to escape slavery, to runway shows by Pyer Moss, we will discuss the important role clothing, textiles and adornment play in the lives of Black people in the U.S. and internationally. This course explores how a turn to clothing, textiles, and adornment (terms that will be defined in course readings and classroom discussions) expands our thinking on Black lived experiences.

Fashion and Race

Fall 2017, Washington University in St. Louis

Is the fashion industry racist?  This course unpacks this contemporary inquiry by decentralizing fashion history to take a critical look at how racial identities are formed and performed, how historical stereotypes are perpetuated, and how theories of representation can be situated within the system of fashion. Students will use theoretical texts on race and representation to read contemporary media surrounding fashion and race (editorials, articles, social media), as well as gain an introduction to recently published research by scholars engaging fashion and race. Not only will students walk away with a richer understanding of how to critically think through race in fashion, but also how doing so gives us a new approach to think through race within a larger system. 

"Black is Beautiful": Race and Representation in American Fashion

Fall 2017, Washington University in St. Louis

This course will introduce students to using fashion as a lens to unpack race and representation in popular culture. Each week’s theme – Fashioning the Black Body, Slavery and Clothing, Clothing and Black Freedom Struggles, Fashion and Jazz and Hip Hop, Black Grooming and Beauty for the Masses and more – intersects with discourses surrounding gender and sexuality, performance, sociology, musicology and more challenging students to rethink how we see and discuss the black body in the mainstream.  Using primary sources and texts on fashion theory, representation and African American history, this course explores these inquiries into how fashion shapes race and how African Americans have used fashion as a site for reclamation in an effort to subvert tropes and establish agency.

Fashion History and Research Methods

Spring 2018, Washington University in St. Louis

This academic course studies cultural and social influences to understand how they shape the evolution of fashion and are expressed in clothing at various junctures in 20th and 21st century history. 

Students explore fashion history through the course’s themes on fashion and the body, fashion and gender & sexuality, fashion and race, fashion and art, fashion and sustainability and fashion and globalization. Students will be introduced to key concepts, theories and arguments and be able to situate them in fashion history that will be surveyed in class. They will also be able to identify how course themes intersect, and identify how such intersections have caused both limitations and expansions of fashion practice over time.

Students will also learn key research methods including Image and Textual Analysis, Materiality, Ethnography and Interviewing. Students will be introduced to scholarship that engages such research methods and examine how they can be applied to understanding some of the course’s sociocultural themes explored through history.

ADDITIONAL COURSES TAUGHT

Twentieth-Century African American Art

Spring 2025, The University of Texas at Austin

Introduction to African American Art History

Fall 2023, School of the Art Institute of Chicago