Earnestine Jenkins

Program Coordinator
Professor, Art History
244H Art and Communication Building
901.678.3450
eljenkns@memphis.edu

University Curriculum Vita

Biography

Dr. Earnestine Jenkins is a scholar of art history and visual studies, interested in the dynamic response to centuries of exchange throughout the African Diaspora across regions, cultures, and histories. Having trained in the fine arts, art history, and history her methods-theories of analysis are comparative and interdisciplinary. Her specific research Interests encompass American art & culture; researching African American artist of the 20th century; 19th and 20th century African American photography and photographic culture; the relationship between the arts-politics-leadership, including 19th early 20th century Ethiopia, and Black visual culture studies of the urban south. Jenkins’ most recent monographs are Black Artists in America: 1930s-1950 Exhibit Catalogue, Yale University Press and Dixon Galleries and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, 2021; and Race, Representation, and Photography in 19th Century Memphis: from Slavery to Jim Crow. London: Ashgate, 2016.

Education

EARNESTINE L. JENKINS (2000), Professor: B.A., 1979, Spelman College; M.A., 1986, Memphis State University; Ph.D., 1997, Michigan State University