Dr. Tanya L. Saunders is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies.  Dr. Saunders' academic interests are in the areas of identity formation, Coloniality Studies/Postcolonial theory, Cultural Studies, Sociology of Knowledge, Afro-Latino Studies, arts-based social movements, race, gender and sexuality.  She is interested in the ways in which the African Diaspora, throughout the Americas use the arts as a central tool for social change.  She has published in journals such as Latin American Perspectives, The Caribbean Review of Gender and Studies, Black Women, Gender and the Family, Feminist Media Studies, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and has published articles both in Cuba and in Brazil.  

Dr. Saunders also co-edited an issue of the Black Diaspora Review (2015) on the future of African Diaspora Studies in post-embargo Cuba.  As a 2011-2012 Fulbright scholar to Brazil she began work on her current project which analyzes urban arts-based social movements in Brazil, with a focus on their influence in both political mobilization among socially marginalized communities, and grassroots-based urban alternative education movements.  

Dr. Saunders holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master of International Development Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Her current book Cuban Underground Hip Hop: Black Thoughts, Black Revolution and Black Modernity (2015), is available from the University of Texas Press, and can be found here:http://goo.gl/fhqrBt