Research and Creative Endeavors

At the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, we aspire to be the premier hub and steward of artistic narratives within the African Diaspora. Our distinguished faculty, visionary staff, and exceptional students shape global discourse through scholarship, performance, and innovation. Together, they generate transformative works of art, pioneering knowledge, and new techniques and technologies that resonate across disciplines and professional fields—cementing our place as a leader in the arts worldwide.

Dr. Melanee C. Harvey is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art. Her research interests include architectural iconography in African American art, Black Arts Movement artists, religious art of Black liberation theology and ecowomanist art practices. Dr. Harvey’s latest publications include, “Becoming an Artist-Activist at Howard University,” Elizabeth Catlett: A Revolutionary Black Artist and All That It Implies (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, Fall 2025); and “‘Think and Pray’: Verbrycke Spiritual Church and Ella Watson’s Religious Worldview,” American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson  (The Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, April 2024). 

Dr. Harvey’s latest grants and fellowships include a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers, and a Gordon Parks Foundation & Howard University Genevieve Young Writing Fellowship.

Professor Denise Hart, a Professor of Playwriting, Dramaturgy and a Director, is the recipient of the 2024 Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts Full Professor award for Scholarly Research and Creative Endeavors.  Her scholarship focuses on African American Theatre, Playwriting, Dramaturgy and Theatre Criticism. Her ongoing research endeavors include: finalist in the American Council of Learned Societies HBCU Fellowship for Decolonizing the Curriculum Through Black Power: Howard Players Theatre History 1969-1979; Scholar and curator of the Howard Players Theatre History Archive 1909-2019 www.howardplayerstheatrehistory.com; 2024-2026 Ford's Theatre guest playwriting master class facilitator: From Quill to Curtain; Dramaturge/Director of The Tribute by Melda Beaty for The Fire Next Time Festival in NYC; Dramaturge and founder Play Development Lab: opportunities for Black women playwrights to advance process, craft and career and Director & Dramaturge for Written Then, Spoken Now: African American Letters to Lincoln” with historian and author, John White and historian Edna Medford airing on CSPAN. 

Dr. Khalid Y. Long is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts. His research interests include African American/Black diasporic theatre, performance, and literature through the lenses of Black feminist/womanist thought, queer studies, and performance studies. His work addresses the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within marginalized and oppressed communities. 

Dr. Long’s latest monograph is Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity, Methuen Drama (Bloomsbury Press, 2023); His latest articles include, “Post-9/11 Theatre and Transnational Feminism: Glenda Dickerson’s Kitchen Prayer Series,” in Theater (February 2024); "Malcolm X, Two Trains running, and the August Wilson Archive" in "Forum: Encounters in the August Wilson Archive," Theater (February 2024); “Staging Black Lives Matter,” in The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre (2nd edition) edited by Harvey Young (Cambridge University Press, 2023);and "Black Mecca and the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival: An Interview with Toni Simmons Henson," in Essays on Psychogeography and the City as Performance: Drifting Through Wonderlands edited by John C. Green (February 2024).  

Dr. Matthew Franke is Master Instructor and Music Historian in the Department of Music. His research focuses on nineteenth-century French opera, especially the music of Jules Massenet and Georges Bizet. His latest publication is “Italian Style and National Stereotypes in Les Pêcheurs de perles,” Opera Journal 56 no. 2 (2023): 1 - 25. The article posits that exoticism is an important concept for understanding depictions of foreign cultures in opera. However, the concept has been used too broadly to describe some music that is really a form of pastiche. Fundamentally, exoticism misrepresents other cultures, but pastiche (as Dr. Franke uses the term) provides an accurate, recognizable version of them. To prove this point, he explores Georges Bizet’s pastiche of Italian musical styles in Les Pêcheurs de perles, an opera whose critical afterlife in English has largely focused on its exoticism.

Professor Brandye Lee is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts in the Dance Concentration. Her scholarship focuses on Ballet technique and choreography. Professor Lee’s latest publication is an anthology chapter titled, “Creating New Spaces: Today's Black Choreographers” in Antiracism in Ballet Teaching, edited by Kate Mattingly and Iyun Ashani Harrison (Routledge, 2023).

Professor Lee’s chapter, “Creating New Spaces: Today's Black Choreographers” uses the groundbreaking event, Reframing the Narrative, as a backdrop to explore the work and experiences of today's African American ballet choreographers, as they navigate through the art form's efforts to diversify.

Reframing the Narrative was a week-long Kennedy Center celebration featuring performances in recognition of the fact that Black ballet dancers had been pillars of the field for decades.