Leslie Wooden
PhD, 2026: Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas, 1960s to the Present
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About
Leslie Wooden received her PhD in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2026, with a concentration in Museum and Exhibition Studies. Her dissertation, A Fashion Sensibility: Clothing and the Politics of Memory through Ghanaian Photography, 1950s to the Present, examines the production and circulation of photography in urban Ghana and its role in shaping collective memory, identity, and social and political change.
Wooden specializes in modern and contemporary African and diasporic art, with research interests in the history of African photography, fashion and the aesthetics of dress, postcolonial theory, and feminist and queer theory. Her research has included extensive fieldwork in Ghana and has been supported by fellowships and grants, including a Boren Fellowship.
She holds an M.A. in Arts Politics and an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, as well as a B.A. in Art History from the University of Colorado Denver. She is currently a C-MAP Africa Fellow in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art.