Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown is the Inaugural Chairperson and MSU Foundation Professor of the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research interests include Black Feminism, Black Girlhood Studies, Arts and Creativity, and Public Humanities. In 2006, Brown founded Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) to celebrate Black girls. Starting with the power Black girls possess to create radical social change, she cultivated SOLHOT’s practices and process into a reliable structure that thrives on Black girl leadership and maximizes positive relationships, c-creates knowledge, and produces original artwork by and with Black girls about Black girlhood. SOLHOT has received support from The Novo Foundation (2018-2021), campus grants, and those who actively participate. A Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellow (2019-2020), Brown’s Black Girl Genius Week (BGGW) exhausts the rituals of SOLHOT to widen the cipher and experience the imaginative capabilities and artistry that only occurs when Black girls and women are together as homegirls. BGGW has taken place in central Illinois (2014, 2016, & 2019), Columbia, SC (2019 & 2020), and Chicago, IL (2019 & 2020). Brown has authored two books, Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood (University of Illinois Press, 2013) and Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward A Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy (Peter Lang, 2009) co-edited several anthologies, Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry: Possibilities and Tensions in Educational Research with R. Carducci and C. Kuby (Peter Lang, 2014) and Wish To Live: The Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy Reader with C. Kwakye (Peter Lang, 2012) and wrote numerous journal articles. Brown is in a band called We Levitate with bandbaes Dr. Porshe Garner, Jessica Robinson, and Dr. Blair E. Smith and has devised and/or performed in several SOLHOT shows including “The Mixtape Remix” (2011), and “Check In!” (2010). Brown’s performance work also includes, “The Rest is Work” (2018), and “Thank you, for the Blood” (2020).