zoe blount

zoe blount is a PhD student in the combined departments of Black Studies and History. Her research broadly concerns the intersections of the U.S. carceral system, 20th century social movements, black feminist thought, and queer theory.

zoe earned a B.A. in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2025. Under the mentorship of Nikki Jones and Micah Khater, her honors thesis examined how black feminist refusal challenged, undermined, and reshaped carceral logics from the 1960s to the 1980s in the Deep South. Building upon her undergraduate work, zoe currently explores how black gender-variant people deconstructed carceral logics about black/trans disposability and psychiatric ideas about rehabilitation in the late 20th century.