As well as numerous essays on race, popular music and social dance, media, and black feminism, Brown is the author of two books, both published by Duke University Press: Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (2008) which argues for the centrality of black expressive cultures to the meanings of modernity, and Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds (2021), which traces black radical utopian practice, from the psychic travels of Sojournal Truth to the cosmic transmutations of Sun Ra. Brown is co-editor of the journal Social Text and has also been a contributing journalist for NPR's music programming. Her areas of research and specialization include black expressive cultures, speculative/science fictions, science studies, and gender and sexuality. Her current work is located at the intersections of race, performance and ecology.
