Profile picture for user Amber Sweat

Amber Sweat

Doctoral Candidate
ambersweat@berkeley.edu
CV
Dwinelle 4314
(Spring 25) Tuesday 4-5; Thursday 3-4

Research Areas

The Black French Atlantic; children and girlhood studies; affect theory; intermediation/transmediation.

Biography

Sign up for office hours here! Students who would like 30 minutes are welcome to take two slots.

***

I’m in the final year of the PhD with a designated emphasis in Film and Media and certificates in Global Urban Humanities; Teaching, Learning, and Higher Education; Universal Design for Learning (UDL). I am also an adjunct faculty member at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

As an educator and researcher, I question what it means to come of age in an era where we live to be seen. Adole(sense), set to become my first monograph, examines moments from texts that I consider emblematic of screen age Black girlhood: said screens include the Photomaton, phone selfies, augmented reality filters, and supernatural elements of texts-as-screen. Analyzing novels and films by Gisèle Pineau, Maïmouna Doucouré, Mati Diop, and Marie NDiaye among others, I argue that screened life does not necessitate a split between the self, body, and image. Instead, I argue that these texts oft trigger a return to the flesh and its senses, complicating the "scopic"; this is especially crucial for racialized girls, since photoimaging’s racial biases cleave, flatten, or distort her image. Further, this corporealization happens with the audience via formal methods that emphasize kinesis and viscera. I show how these moments make readers and viewers shiver, become breathless, elicit particular textures, and pique an interest in the body, its limits, and its possibilities in an age where both bodies and texts are existentially complicated by the digital. The ultimate result, for the girls in-text, is the development of a corporeal episteme. For us, it's what we might call "empathy."

My second book project concerns Black girl technocultures in Francophone new media, this time outside of narrative fictions. I am also working towards a collected edition on Francophone women's textual genealogies and the feminist historiographies we might find therewithin. When I can, I also enjoy exploring and teaching on the Black American expatriates–Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and the elusive Marpessa Dawn, to name a few. For fun, I also like to think about net communities' engagement with literature and media. I am currently sketching out a few public-facing pieces, including a project on r/BooksThatFeelLikeThis.

I received my MA from Berkeley in 2020 and come to California by way of an Honors BA in French and History at UT Austin. Before Berkeley, I also held a research internship at l'Université de Paris (Sorbonne-IV), Centre Roland Mousnier. I was in the 2017-2018 cohort for the Teaching Assistant Program in France (aka TAPIF) in Aubervilliers, France. I am a Chancellor's Fellow and former Gérard Fellow, and I was happy to receive honorable mention from the Ford Foundation in 2023. I was a research assistant for the Universal Design Working Group in 2023, and I also undertook funded research with the Center for Race and Gender. I hold former affiliations with the Berkeley Transformative Justice Group and the Mellon-Berkeley Law and Humanities Symposium.

More than anything, I'm a very proud first-generation student of Black/Pinay ancestry. I was raised and heat-tested in Texas. I have a penchant for coffee shops, cycling, and distance running. I’m learning how to play chess. Dementia awareness and advising mean a lot to me.

You can also find me at www.ambersweat.com. Furthermore, my GoogleScholar is here. 

Selected Publications

First Author/Reviews

As Co-Author

  • (2025, forthcoming) Faidley, E., Weiher, R., Sweat, A., Davidson, J. “Framing Higher Education Social Movements: The Case of the University of California (UC) System.” 

Translations