Why Scholar-Artist?

Two people are engaged in a conversation, looking at a book together. The person on the left is a man with a shaved head, beard, and wearing a black t-shirt, with a thoughtful expression. The person on the right is a woman with short hair, earrings, and a black sleeveless top, holding the book and speaking to the man.

I define my work as centering body knowledge and enlarging capacity for honoring difference. With my transdisciplinary scholarship, I intend to uplift subversive truths and theories. I am a cultural worker, mover, and poet. Sometimes I’m working within the walls of the academy as a writer or professor. Sometimes I am breaking the mold of what a scholar is by exploring somatics as spirit work. Most often, I am building unconventional bridges for collaboration between academic studies, cultural ecologies, and local community hubs in order to nourish our Global Body. 


Love, Black (Femme) Life, Self-Definition, and Black Queer Visibility are driving factors in my work as a scholar-artist. Black bodies are often misread and not credited for our fluidity or life intelligence, which interferes with how we see ourselves in relationship to each other. By studying embodiment as a Blackqueer lesbian scholar, I am sharing tools for how we bring humanity back into our bodies and how we respond to the state of the planet.

My Mission

  • Abstract blurred background with blue, yellow, orange, and red colors. Healing somatic scholar.

    Creative Dissent

    My work cultivates creative liberation through amplifying underestimated and undervalued voices. In particular, uplifting and translating the ways that Black bodies have always been practicing liberation and worldmaking. This includes foregrounding the body in the creative process and using spirit modalities for visioning the future of the earth.

  • Blurred gradient background with soft pastel blue, pink, yellow, and orange colors. Healing somatic scholar.

    Queer(ing) Visibility

    The structures of my pedagogy intentionally highlight those overlooked by society-at-large and sew their stories together to demonstrate our global interconnections. By analyzing what has been normalized, what has gone unnoticed, and what has been deemed inadequate, I aim to shift the way we think about legacy and empower less celebrated histories of liberation work.

  • Blurred gradient background with soft colors including blue, pink, yellow, and orange. Healing somatic scholar.

    Intimate Education

    As an educator and forever student, I employ free flow guidance, movement, and body knowledge in my scholarship. My assignments and activities connect content to lived experience in order to sharpen students’ voices and normalize the reality that everyone has their own way of finding expression.

  • Blurred abstract colorful background with blue, yellow, orange, and pink hues. Healing somatic scholar.

    Healing

    In addition to normalizing difference as a vital learning tool that connects us all, my scholarship brings attention, care, and appreciation to the intergenerational work of those on the frontlines of social change — especially Black queer people, women, and girls.

Who Is This Work For?

Afterschool and Enrichment Programs

Including advocacy groups, policy makers, and government agencies focused on youth work.

DEI and Professional Development Programs

This can include people looking to create pathways for more meaningful forms of collaboration.

Anyone Defining and Naming

For people who are looking to find more language and understanding in their relationships whether that is a contained definition of community or within the context of larger systems.

People Who Have a Story to Tell

Anyone exploring the value of emotion and body knowledge in their research or finding pieces of themselves that are worth remembering and sharing.

Those Exploring the “How”

Including anyone who wants to explore the “how” of their work and expand their toolkits for better approaching the process.

Intergenerational Spaces

Such as agencies engaged in adult-youth mentorship relationships, mother-daughter programs as well as mother-daughter pairings seeking to deepen mutual understanding, or groups that seek to encourage conversation among people of varied ages.

Courses

A person holding a collage artwork featuring a black taped silhouette of a person with a brown textured paper head, a small cut-out figure, and a cut-out phrase that says 'a sweet little girl'. writer performance artist scholar Black Girlhood Somatic

June Jordan Pedagogy

  • Known for many gifts and by many descriptors—poet, educator, journalist, librettist, activist, Black feminist, bisexual—this course is organized around the audacious writing and living of June Jordan.


    This course stretches students' understandings of activism and praxis while honing students’ toolkits for world-building.

  • As an experiential-based course, students examine and practice the enlivening pedagogies of Jordan’s speeches, poetry, essays, and others’ interpretations of Jordan. Through original poetry, collage, and community art expressions, students engage questions like: Where is love located in your living and activism? What have you been teaching your body and how? In what civil wars are you involved? How will you sharpen your tongue? To what violences are we being courteous? What new tools can be utilized towards embodied living and community building? 

Group of diverse people playing with illuminated jump ropes in an indoor setting, with some participants watching and recording the activity.

Corridors of Black Girlhood 

  • This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Black Girlhood Studies and is formed around recognizing the power of Black girlhood. Through interpretive and pragmatic inquiry of Black girls’ lives, students hone their interpretive and analytical skills to interrogate the ways power, systems of oppression, and culture mediate girlhood. 

  • To unmask discrepancies in popularized narratives of Black girls and women in the United States, learning involves critical thinking and embodiment of theories as produced by Black girls, artists, and scholars. Students are exposed to concepts derived from Black feminisms and womanism. They are given tools to engage with Black girlhood as a political category of identity and a symbol of agency.

Group of young people in face masks posing playfully against a gold textured wall.

Black Feminist Thinkers

  • Black feminist tools, questions, and approaches to social issues are the focus of this course. We explore themes of sexuality, education, and self-definition. Students develop comprehensive responses to the following questions: What are ingredients of Black feminist thinking? How are embodiment and theory connected? How do Black sexualities inform gender and racial hierarchies? 

  • While students focus primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century thinkers in the Americas, some attention is also given to thinkers from Africa and Europe. Coursework confronts  students’ understanding of frameworks relevant to gender and feminist studies.

  • Three collaged posters with accompanying text on a beige wall. The left poster features a woman in a long dress with speech bubbles, the middle poster shows a face with a round eye and a yellow flower, and the right poster contains collage text and images including phrases like "Make Your Moment Where the Movement Was Made" and "Queer."

    Share It.

  • A promotional poster for events organized by Colgate Arts Council, featuring colorful graphics, including a hand holding a megaphone, a mirror with the words "Who Look At Me!!!," a butterfly, and a photo of a man with a crown drawing on his head. The poster lists events from March 27th to March 31st, including workshops, lectures, and an open mic, with details on dates, times, locations, and activities.

    Grow It.

  • A group of women sitting at tables in a room, engaging in a craft activity. The tables are scattered with magazines, glue, and scissors. Some women are working on their projects, while others are reading or observing. The room has colorful chairs and posters on the walls.

    Imagine It.

  • A group of people participating in a glow-in-the-dark jump rope activity in a dimly lit indoor space with a wooden floor and ceiling and windows in the background. Black girlhood.

    Practice It.

  • Poster for the event 'Poetics of Rememory' featuring a young woman with closed eyes, wearing a yellow top, a green headscarf, earrings, and a necklace. The event is scheduled for March 28-30, 2022, at the Golden Auditorium from 6:30 to 8:30 PM. It includes a film screening and artist dialogue. The poster has a QR code, a black and red background, and mentions co-sponsors like WMST, SiO Diversity, and others.

    Feel It.

  • A woman in a pink hoodie and gray sweatpants holding a comic book, speaking to three seated individuals in a dimly lit indoor space.

    Feel It.

  • Speak It.

  • Co-Create It.

Written Scholarship

Book cover titled 'Black Girl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability + Transgression' by Dominique C. Hill, featuring a colorful, abstract digital artwork of a woman's face with various geometric and dotted patterns. Black girlhood studies.

Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression. (Vanderbilt University Press, 2025)

Book cover titled 'Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet' with illustrations of four diverse Black women, and text about qualitative inquiries on race, gender, sexualities, and culture, published by Routledge. Scholar.

Alexander, Bryant K, Weems, Mary A., Hill, Dominique C., and Callier, Durell M.

Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet: Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture.  New York: Routledge, 2022.

Book cover titled 'Who Look at Me?!' with a purple background, featuring smiling children, colorful flowers, leaves, and torn pieces of paper with handwritten text. Black Aliveness scholar.

Hill, Dominique C. and Callier, Durell M. '

Who look at me?!: Shifting the gaze of education through blackness, queerness, and the body. Brill, Sense Publishers, 2019.

Book cover titled 'Refusing the Limits of Contemporary Childhood' with artwork showing colorful, abstract graffiti on vertical panels. Black culture scholar.

“Troubling Innocence: Staging Scenes of Black Youth Pleasures and Possibilities.”

In Refusing the Limits of Contemporary Childhood, edited by Julie C. Garlen and Neil T. Ramjewan, 219-239. New York: Lexington Books, 2024. 

Performance Scholarship

Dominique C. Hill was a feature guest on the season four finale of Behind The Woman by PBS. which focused on a group of women who are enriching Central New York through the arts. The 54 minute episode includes performances by Nakiea Chambers and Dominique C. Hill; a check in with season one cast member - Cjala Surratt; and a panel discussion with playwright and lyricist Johanna Keller, performer Dominique C. Hill, and author Gwendolyn D. Pough.

Four women sitting on a couch and chairs in a TV studio, engaged in a discussion. The setting is decorated with bookshelves, plants, and artwork. PBS scholar.

Rupturing Silence

(2016)

Photo Credit: Taylor Meredith

Audience seated in a circle in a dimly lit room with a large blank screen at the front, preparing for a presentation or event. Nontraditional performance.
Person standing in front of a large projected image of a woman with short hair and a serious expression, wearing a teal jacket and white shirt, with a background of a door and wall with notes and books.

When the Stakes Are Too D*mn High

(2018)

Photo Credit: Lisa Fay

A person with short hair and a nose ring looking surprised or concerned, while another person points and gestures at them. Black queer scholar
A woman and a man are engaging in a demonstration or exercise, with the woman pulling on the man's extended arm while the man responds enthusiastically. Black feminist scholar.

My Scholar-Artist Ancestors

A woman with short curly hair performing a dance move on stage, wearing a leopard print dress, against a dark background. Black queer artist.
A woman with black, curly hair and glasses speaking at a microphone in a classroom or lecture hall. Black feminist artist.
A group of five people in colorful costumes with face paint, including a person with a dog, posing together in a theatrical setting with a honeycomb background. Black queer artist scholar.
A woman with curly gray hair wearing a white button-up shirt, standing with her arms crossed in front of a dark curtain. Black feminist dance scholar.
Illustration of a Black woman with curly hair featuring the words 'Black Girl Genius Week' and the dates March 4-8, 2019, June 3-7, 2019, with a green and purple splatter background. Black girlhood performer.
Close-up of an elderly African American woman with gray hair, wearing glasses and earrings, smiling thoughtfully with her hand near her chin. Black writer.

  • Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, James Baldwin, Ruth Nicole-Brown, Audre Lorde, Nikky Finney, Pat Parker

  • Theatrical Jazz Aesthetics, Alice Coltrane, Afro house music, WeLevitate Music, Meshell N’Degeocello, Arrested Development, Soul II Soul, Lil Kim, Salt N Pepa

  • Urban Bush Women (dance company and movement methodology), Camille A. Brown, Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire, Alseny Soumah, Lola Manekin, Black Girl dance Cyphers in the streets of Buffalo, NY and Illinois, The Wiz, Cynthia Oliver, Ntozake Shange, Theatrical Jazz Aesthetics.

  • Black Girl Genius Week, Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), My great-grandmother’s morning speeches and table talk, Local community centers, Juneteenth/Black pride celebrations, Mamma Crystal, Wiping the tears or making way for the tears of the Black woman and girls who have influenced the work.