Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin
Dunn-Salahuddin’s research explores the history of the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point filtered through the lens of environment, race, and infrastructure. Primarily focusing on the Bayview-Hunters Point community of the 1960s and 1970s, the project emphasizes: 1) the production of urban black space in relation to gender and Black political ideology; 2) the development of US nuclear capabilities in San Francisco and its toxic aftermaths; 3) the relationship between Black environmentalism and civil rights in Northern California. At its core, this project is an urban black history of post-WWII America that traces the spatial, material, and social conditions of African American life in San Francisco. Utilizing oral history, community engagement, and original dance film shorts, this project reveals the ways that African Americans informed and shaped their environments, as well as the institutions and systems that governed their lives. Dunn-Salahuddin has also studied dance and the performing arts at both San Francisco State and Stanford University, and is in the certification process for Katherine Dunham Modern Dance Technique. She believes the performing arts can be used to bridge communities to the academy and systems of knowledge production.
Dissertation Chair & Co-Chair: Dr. ahobbs [at] stanford.edu (Allyson Hobbs)& Dr. Gabrielle Hecht
Publications:
- “Kindred Spirits: Mary Graham Value Test Brown Paper,” MOAD Journal, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA, June, 1, 2024.
- "A Forgotten Community, A Forgotten History: San Francisco's 1966 Uprising" featured in The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside the South (NYU Press, 2019)
Lectures:
- “‘The Ecology’: Race, Environment, and Infrastructure in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point,” Community Engaged History: Documenting Local Histories of Environment and Housing, Stanford Historical Society, May, 2022.
- “A Forgotten Community, A Forgotten History, San Francisco’s 1966 Uprising,”Conversations in Black Freedom Struggles, Revisiting the Urban Uprisings of the 1960's, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, 2018.
Interviews:
- “How San Francisco’s Income Inequality Reflects U.S.History,” NowThisNews, Now Media Network, May 25, 2023.
- Dance in Conversation, Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin with Luke Williams, The Brooklyn Rail, 2021.
- Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin in Conversation with Emory Douglas, “Artist Talk: Emory Douglas,” SFMOMA, October 28, 2021.
- “Movements of Change: Dance, Liberation, and the Power of Aesthetics,” Center for Global Ethnography, Stanford University, 2020.