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Rashida K. Braggs is Professor of Africana Studies and a faculty affiliate in Comparative Literature at Williams College. Her book Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music and Migration in Post-World War II Paris investigates the migratory experiences of African American jazz musicians in 1946-1963 Paris. In her current manuscript and accompanying performance project “Paris Jazz Grooves as Black Women Move,” she explores how and why black women jazz performers of African descent migrate to and from Paris from 1969-2019. Her work has been published widely in such journals as The Journal of Popular Music, Jazz and Culture, The Black Scholar, The James Baldwin Review and Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. She was awarded a Fulbright Global Scholar Award and co-awarded a National Endowment of the Humanities fellowship to support her research. Dr. Braggs is also a scholar-performer who acts, dances, sings, composes music and performs spoken word. Jacob’s Pillow, the United Solo Theatre Festival, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Tapir Gallery in Germany, and the Camargo Foundation in France have all featured her performances. Dr. Braggs consistently interweaves her scholarly explorations with her pedagogical practices. Her courses at Williams College such as Groovin’ the Written Word: The Role of Music in African American Literature, Moving While Black, Comic Lives: Graphic Novels & Dangerous Histories of the African Diaspora and Performing Blackness all teach students to explore ways that performance, though seemingly just entertainment, conveys much about a society’s values, patterns and negotiations of power.