Dr. Cherise Smith is a professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in American art after 1945, especially as it intersects with the politics of identity, race, and gender. She is founding Executive Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies, which consist of the Christian-Green Gallery and IdeaLab. Cherise previously directed the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and co-directed the Op-Ed Project. From 2021 to 2022 she was the inaugural Scholar of the Getty Research Institute’s African American Art History Initiative. Her award-winning recent book, Michael Ray Charles: A Retrospective (University of Texas Press, 2020), surveys Charles’ career, exploring the artist’s “sampling” approach to provocative anti-black stereotypes, as well as his analysis of African American masculinity and sports culture.