Faculty

David Ponton

Associate Professor & SIGS Undergraduate Director
Director, Instutite on Black Life
Chair, Racial Justice Initiative

Contact

Home Campus: Tampa
Office: FAO 269
Email

Office Hours: Available at the start of each semester at

Education

Ph.D. in History, Rice University, 2017

  • Certificate: Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

M.A. in History, Rice University, 2014
A.B. in Religion, Princeton University, 2009

  • Certificate: African American Studies
  • Certificate: 6-12 Social Studies Education

Bio

Dr. Ponton is the author of  (University of Texas Press, 2024). His research on segregation utilizes Afropessimism to destabilize our understanding of change, time, and redemption in the singular moment of black suffering.

Houston and the Permanence of Segregation Cover

 

Selected Publications

Houston and the Permanence of Segregation: An Afropessimist Approach to Urban History, Austin: University of Texas Press, February 6, 2024.

“An Afropessimist, Antidisciplinary Rejoinder to History, Its Human, and Its Anti-Blackness,” Qui Parle .

“An Afropessimist Account of History,” History and Theory 61, no. 2 (June 2022), 219-241. . 

“Private Matters in Public Spaces: Intimate Partner Violence against Black Women in Jim Crow Houston,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39, no. 2 (June 2018). . 

“A Protracted War for Order: Police Violence in the Twentieth Century United States,” History Compass (May 2018). . “

“Clothed in Blue Flesh: Police Brutality and the Disciplining of Race, Gender, and the ‘Human,’” Theory & Event 19, no. 3 (2016). .

Current Thesis and Dissertation Committees

  • Brittany Powell (M.L.A. student in Africana Studies) - director
  • Marcella Zulla (Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology)

Past Thesis and Dissertation Committees

  • Amber Klee (M.L.A. student in Africana Studies) - director
  • Sharun Gonzales Mutate (M.A. in Latin American Studies)
  • Anala Lucia Mosquera Rosado (M.L.A. in Africana Studies)
  • Keylon Lovett (M.A. in Journalism and Media Studies)
  • Janae Thomas (Ph.D. candidate in Political Science) – director
  • Jordan Battle (M.L.A. student in Africana Studies) – director
  • Didier Salgado (M.A. student in Sociology)

Prospective graduate students interested in Africana Studies or related fields, and especially those who aim to practice historical methods, are welcome to inquire about thesis/dissertation work related to segregation, Africana philosophy, Afropessimism, and black male studies.