Jordana Moore Saggese is Professor of Modern and Contemporary American Art at the University of Maryland, College Park and the former Editor-in-Chief of the College Art Association’s Art Journal. She was previously Associate Professor of Contemporary Art & Theory at California College of the Arts.
Trained as an art historian, Saggese's work focuses on modern and contemporary American art with an emphasis on the critical expressions and theorizations of blackness. She is an internationally-recognized expert on the work of the American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88). Her newest book The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses was published in March 2021 by the University of California Press. Her book Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation is forthcoming from Duke University Press.