Rashida K. Braggs is a scholar-performer who acts, dances, sings, composes music and performs spoken word. Jacob’s Pillow, Williams College Museum of Art, the Tapir Art Gallery and the United Solo Theatre Festival have featured her performances. She is also a Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), a Fulbright Global Scholar, and a co-recipient of a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship. The author of Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music and Migration in Post-World War II Paris, Rashida has also published in such journals as the Nottingham French Studies, the Journal of Popular Music Studies and The Black Scholar. 

Rashida K. Braggs is working on a book+performance project that she commenced at Camargo’s Cultural Diaspora Program in 2022. Entitled Amber in the City of Light, the performance merges original song, dance, poetry and theatre to illustrate her research on the experiences of Black African diasporic women jazz artists who have migrated to Paris, France over time. Culling original interviews, field notes and archival research, Rashida enacts and re-envisions multiple narratives through her singular performing body. All the while, she strives to produce performative scholarship that resonates with diverse audiences on the page and beyond it in visceral, impactful ways.