Biography

My name is Danielle Procope Bell, and I am an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I am also affiliate faculty in English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. My work is grounded in Black feminist thought, with a particular focus on gender identity, interiority, and the right to care in the lives of Black women.

My research spans the late nineteenth century to the present digital age. I have written on nineteenth-century writer-activists such as Frances E.W. Harper and Nannie Helen Burroughs, contemporary digital spaces, including the Black manosphere and femosphere, and about the lived experiences of autistic Black women. Across these projects, I center their ‘felt lives,’ which describes the sensorial and affective elements of everyday experience, and examine how they intersect with structural constraints.  

I regularly teach courses such as Race, Gender, and Medicine, Black Women Writers, Black Feminisms, and Introduction to African American Studies (1865-Present). In my classes, students learn through a mix of primary and secondary documents, literature, and media. I encourage students to develop their own perspectives and to connect course material to their broader intellectual lives.  

My forthcoming book, Distinctly Different: Autigendering as Black Feminist Practice(Illinois Press), introduces the concept of “autigendering” to describe how Black women form gender from the inside out—through felt life and self-recognition—rather than through external validation or social performance. Drawing on thinkers such as Hortense J. Spillers and Audre Lorde, the book traces how Black women have navigated ‘ungendering’ and misogynoir while still cultivating rich, interior forms of gendered selfhood. Through analyses of figures ranging from Sojourner Truth to Megan Thee Stallion and Caster Semenya, I show how centering the interior opens new possibilities for Black feminist thought and practice.

Selected Publications

• Procope Bell, Danielle. “A Delicious Sense of Joy and Love:” On Centering Black Women Readers and Black Domestic Idealism in Frances E.W. Harper’s Iola Leroy.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985038
• Procope Bell, Danielle. “Notes on Black women deserving death in the Black manosphere.” European Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251364727
• Procope Bell, Danielle. “(Dis)Allowing Black Mothering: Reflections on The Mammy, the Welfare Queen, and the Long Specter of Black Maternal Health Disparities.” Journal of Mother Studies. https://jourms.org/disallowing-black-mothering-the-mammy-and-welfare-queen-state-resources-and-black-maternal-health-activism/.
• Procope Bell, Danielle. “‘Pick-Me’ Black women: tactical patriarchal femininity in the Black manosphere.” Feminist Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2023.2262163.

Education

• PhD, Vanderbilt University, English
• MA, University College London, Comparative Literature
• BA, University of the Pacific, English and Philosophy