Nicole R. Fleetwood is a writer, curator, and the James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU who has recently been named the Gordon Parks Foundation's inaugural Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Fleetwood’s research and writing has focused on representations of Blackness in art, performance, and popular culture. Her recent landmark book and exhibition, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020), which investigates the cultural, personal, and aesthetic significance of incarcerated people’s art. Nicole Fleetwood holds a BPhil (1994) from Miami University and an MA (1998) and PhD (2001) from Stanford University. She is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow. She has co/curated exhibitions and programs on art and mass incarceration at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, the Andrew Freedman Home, Aperture Foundation, Cleveland Public Library, Eastern State Penitentiary, MoMA PS1, Mural Arts Philadelphia, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and Worth Rises. She recently contributed an essay to Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime (2020), published jointly by the Gordon Parks Foundation and Museum of Modern Art.

“The system is overwhelming and that is part of its power: to make people feel completely and totally isolated, depressed, and helpless. Recognizing that is part of it.” Nicole R. Fleetwood