DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Biography

Justin L. Mann (he/him/his, Ph.D. American Studies, George Washington University), has research and teaching interests in Black feminist theory and queer of color studies, 20th and 21st century African American literatures, American Studies, and speculative fiction studies.

His first book Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculative Fiction (Duke University Press, 2026) argues that Black speculative fictions are an essential but overlooked archive for understanding the United States’ security ambitions since the Reagan administration. Drawing on Black feminist, critical race, and queer of color theoretical traditions, Breaking the World argues that worldbreaking is an ethical and aesthetic orientation to the dangerous, worldmaking process of securitization—the process by which state and parastate agents augment and build up the tools, techniques, and infrastructures intended to make people safer. Worldbreaking appears in the fiction of Octavia E. Butler, Colson Whitehead, N. K. Jemisin, in the music and video work of Janelle Monáe, and also in unexpected places, such as the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Breaking the World charts the difference between securitization and “Black insecurity.” Not simply an opponent process or antithesis to securitization, Black insecurity is an apposite relation that synthesizes the anti-Blackness of security praxis with the power derived from Black collectivity. Rather than highlight the obliteration Black people face due to the increasingly securitized world, Breaking the World emphasizes that worldbreaking is an important aspect of the Black radical imagination, showing that speculation is an essential response to the dangerous worlds of securitization.

He is currently at work on a second monograph analyzing the cultural work of Black dreams in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. Reading across a range of sources, including the novel, political and prison memoir, Broadway musical, contemporary film, and children’s cartoon, this project examines the morphology and power of Black dreams that dared to push past the constraint of integration.

His work has appeared in the peer-reviewed journals MELUS, Feminist Theory, and Surveillance & Society, and American Quarterly. He has also contributed to critical volumes on Black feminism, science and technology studies, and literature and diaspora. His research has been supported by the Huntington Library and by the Princeton Department of African American Studies. Read more about his work at justinlmann.com.

Specializations

African American Literature, Critical Theory, 20th- & 21st-century American Literature, Critical Race Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies