Koritha Mitchell, PhD

A renowned cultural critic, feminist scholar, and award-winning author, who coined the term “Know-Your-Place Aggression, Koritha analyzes American culture to empower audiences and advocate for social equity.

Decency is not an American inheritance; it requires deliberate effort. How could decency be our inheritance? We live on stolen land. Koritha Mitchell, PhD

Her first book, Living with Lynching, won awards from the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW). Her second book, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, appeared in August 2020 and was named a Best Book of 2020 by Ms. Magazine and Black Perspectives and a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2021. She is also editor of an edition of Frances E.W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy and of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, which became the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman when it was published in 1861. Mitchell’s scholarly articles include “James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie” and “Love in Action,” which identifies similarities between lynching and violence against LGBTQ communities. Mitchell’s public commentary has appeared in Time, CNN, The Washington Post, Good Morning America, the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others, and she received a Progressive Women's Voices IMPACT Award from the Women's Media Center in 2023.  

As the first in her family to graduate from college, Koritha understands that the knowledge needed to succeed in various environments may seem like common sense, but it is anything but natural and self-evident. She therefore enjoys equipping audiences with information that will demystify the challenges they encounter. Likewise, having devoted decades to studying violence, Koritha understands the different forms it can take. Discursive violence may be bloodless, but it is quite damaging. She therefore enjoys equipping audiences to see how, when institutions and cultures have been designed for injustice and inequity, violence is built into what is most commonly said and done.

Books & Movies

Interested in placing an order for books or videos by this speaker for your event? Please contact us for more information or to process your order.

Order