Ayana Flewellen

Ayana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, an artist scholar and a storyteller. Flewellen is the co-founder and current President of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. They were selected for the inaugural 2021-2023 cohort Called By Water, directed by Sharon Bridgforth and Omi Oshun Jones, funded by Solidaire Networks’ Black Liberation Pooled Fund. In 2022 Ayana joined Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology as an Assistant Professor. Her research and teaching interests are shaped by and speak to Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, memory, and representations of slavery. Their current book project, tentatively titled The Will to Adorn: Black Women and Sartorial Choice After Enslavement examines sartorial practices of self-making among African American tenant, sharecropping and landowning African Americans in post-emancipated Texas, Tennessee and Virginia. Sartorial practices, in this forthcoming work, are defined as social-cultural practices, shaped by many intersecting operations of power and oppression including racism, sexism, and classism, that involve modifications of the corporal form (e.g., scarification, body piercings and hair alteration), and all three-dimensional supplements added to the body (e.g., clothing, hair combs, jewelry).

Currently teaching