Jovonna Jones: MFA Visual Arts 2026 January Artist Talks

Jovonna Jones is a writer and cultural historian from Greater Boston. She is an Assistant Professor of English and African & African Diaspora Studies at Boston College, specializing in visual culture, Black feminisms, and the built environment. Her articles have appeared in Aperture, Boston Art Review, Callaloo, Souls, and Southern Cultures, along with essays in Fragments of a Crucifixion (MCA Chicago), Picturing Black History (Abrams Books), and LaToya M. Hobbs: Carving Out Time (Harvard Art Museums). Her current work blends family history and visual archives to re-examine Black space-making and spatial activism in Boston’s South End. Jovonna is a 2024-2025 ACLS Fellow. She has previously held fellowships at the Newhouse Center for Humanities, Dartmouth College, the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She holds her PhD and MA from Harvard University and BA from Emory University, each in African American Studies.