I specialize in American and African American cultural production in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on the history of racial perception. My teaching and research interests include critical race studies, architecture and spatial studies, American studies, Modernism, Post-45, the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, popular culture, visual culture, and sound studies.

With Valerie Smith, I co-edited the volume Race and Real Estate (Oxford, 2015) , an interdisciplinary collection rethinking narratives of property and citizenship. My first book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (Johns Hopkins, 2017 )—winner of the Modernist Studies Association’s 2018 First Book Prize—recovers the skyscraper’s drastic effects not only on the shape of the city but the racial sensorium of its residents. My most recent book, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership (Stanford , 2024), uses literary and bureaucratic archives to chart how mass homeownership changed the definition, perception, and value of race. My writing has also appeared in Designo, Curbed, Jewish Currents, Harvard Design Magazine, Foreign Policy, and Public Books.

I serve as the Faculty Director of Arts + Public Life , a dynamic hub of exploration, expression, and exchange fostering neighborhood vibrancy through the arts on the South Side of Chicago.

Adrienne Brown photo by Anjali Pinto.