Cecilio M. Cooper is a Forsyth Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan. They hold a PhD [with Distinction] in African American Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Critical Theory from Northwestern University. Cooper is currently preparing their first book manuscript South of Heaven: Surface, Territory + the Black Chthonic. By engaging the visual cultures of alchemy, demonology, and cartography, it examines the occulted roles that blackness + darkness play in cosmological constitutions of subsurface space. Their research has been supported by such institutions as the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Antiquarian Society, John Carter Brown Library, and Yale Center for British Art.
