DR. ARIA S. HALLIDAY

INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED
SCHOLAR.
TEACHER.
​CULTURAL THEORIST.
AUTHOR OF BLACK GIRLS AND HOW WE FAIL THEM

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ABOUT

​Aria S. Halliday, Ph.D. holds the Marie Rich Endowed Professorship and is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Halliday is known for her research on the cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. She engages broad interdisciplinary interests in Black feminism, art, and performance in Black popular culture in the United States and the Caribbean. Her research is featured in Cultural Studies, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Girlhood Studies, Palimpsest, and SOULS. Her article, "Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body" won the 2021 Stuart Hall Foundation x Cultural Studies Award.

BOOKS

Black Girls and How We Fail Them

“In Black Girls and How We Fail Them, Aria Halliday eloquently and incisively captures the relationship between popular culture and the sociological realities that shape our collective understanding of race and gender in America. Halliday's book is a penetrating examination of how depictions of Black girls and women in music, film, and politics both animate and reflect the way they are treated in society at large. This book is both an invitation and an opportunity. I am so grateful it exists.”
—Clint Smith III, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America

"Black Girls and How We Fail Them is a timely and honest love letter to Black girls and an exploration of accountability for those who love and misunderstand them alike. A must-read for those inside and outside popular culture's long reach."
—Dr. Regina N. Bradley, author of Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South

"[Black Girls and How We Fail Them] is an incredibly necessary work! It's required reading for anyone who loves Black girls and is committed to their thriving. This needs to be on your list of books to read this year!!!"
—Candice Marie Benbow, author of Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough

Buy Black
How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture

“Buy Black offers an important and well-argued consideration of the Black women cultural producers who, in an effort to subvert a misogynoiristic system, sometimes traffic in the very stereotypical practices they wish to upend. Halliday’s concept of ‘embodied objectification’ helps to make clear our own investments in consumer capitalism and prompts us to be more circumspect about our participation as a means to some ultimately unsatisfying end.”
—Dr. Moya Bailey, author of Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance

"In focusing on Black women as culture-makers, the book provides a uniquely important view as to the ways that Black women's ingenuity and entrepreneurship have been largely overlooked in understanding these questions. I was consistently impressed with the author's ability to cast a wide net that moves across many topics, while keeping it all held together so that the shape and fit seem right."
—Dr. Elizabeth Chin, author of My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries

The Black Girlhood Studies Collection

“The field of Black Girlhood Studies deserves a book this beautiful, this powerful, and this affirming. Halliday has put together a collection of works that truly loves Black girls. Each chapter is unique and interdisciplinary. It asks us to explore how we understand Black girlhood today. Don’t just read this book: deeply study it. The collective knowledge within these pages will push the field and our communities for years to come.”
—Dr. Bettina L. Love, author of We Want to Do More Than Survive and Hip Hop's Lil' Sisters Speak

“This collection, expertly edited by the emerging and ambitious scholar Aria Halliday, is both an inoculation and an antidote, as well as a testament to the exponential power of Black Girlhood Studies. The text is a savvy reframing of the too-often denied legibility of Black girls’ worthiness—their need for protection, play, security, imagination, and prevention from harm. This volume is its own world-making of the past, present, and future, reshaping the context in which Black girls can finally shine.”
—Dr. Kyra D. Gaunt, author of The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop

​“This groundbreaking collection brings together some of the most brilliant emerging and leading scholars in Black Girlhood Studies. Offering both intellectually rigorous and deeply affective insights, this collection shows us why we need Black Girlhood Studies and how to do it well. This is the collection Black girls deserve.”
—Dr. Treva Lindsey, author of Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, DC

Scholar.

Teacher.

Cultural Theorist.
Teaching is an opportunity
to embrace new ideas,
create innovative assignments,
and challenge myself
& my students.

-Dr. Halliday