Leigh Raiford earned her doctorate in African American Studies and American Studies from Yale University in 2003. Before coming to UC Berkeley, she was the Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. Her teaching and research interests include race, gender and visual culture with an emphasis on film and photography; race and racial formations of the United States; twentieth century African American social movements; race and memory; and black popular culture.