Rasheed (she/they) spoke to a packed auditorium via Zoom to discuss her work as a writer, educator, and artist. Born in East Palo Alto, CA, and currently living in Brooklyn, NY, Rasheed is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts known for her work in installations, book arts, immersive text-based installations, large-scale public text pieces, publications, collage, and audio recordings. She earned an MA in Secondary Social Studies Education from Stanford University (2008) and a BA in Public Policy from Pomona College (2006). She was an Amy Biehl U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa (2006–7).

A learner, Rasheed grapples with the poetics-pleasures-politics of Black knowledge production, information technologies, [un]learning, and belief formation. They are a recipient of a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research, 2022 Creative Capital Award, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Rasheed is the author of three artist’s books: An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019), No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019), and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, The New Inquiry, Shift Space, Active Cultures, and The Believer.

Recorded at RISD September 22, 2022