Rhae Lynn Barnes is Assistant Professor of American cultural history at Princeton University, USA. In 2019, after Governor Ralph Northam admitted to either donning blackface or dressing up as a Klansman, Barnes' work became central to a national conversation about blackface. Her research taught public audiences what amateur blackface and drag are as genres of white nationalism while reframing its chronology and geography for 500 news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, CBS, PBS, and New York Magazine. She is co-editor of After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America and author of the forthcoming Darkology: When the American Dream Wore Blackface, among other books.