From the complicated antihero to the outright villain audiences love to hate, white devilry permeates visual media and pop-culture artifacts around the world. I’ve been obsessed with this concept since I saw Terence Nance’s incomparable Random Acts of Flyness, and as a result read James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work. I am in the process of writing an entire book about white devilry in visual media. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve written so far in a helpful reading order.

1. Who Gets to be an Antihero: A Primer on White Devilry in Visual Media. Black Girl Nerds, September 2022.
2. Missouri is the New Pop Culture Landscape for “White Devil” Narratives Black Girl Nerds, October 2018.
3. Jordan Peele’s Sly Commentary on Whiteness in ‘Us’, Black Girl Nerds, June 2020.
4. It Does Not Belong in a Museum: Indiana Jones’ Colonizer Legacy, Black Girl Nerds, August 2022.
5. In Defense of Racebending ‘Cloud Atlas’ on Its 10th Anniversary, Black Girl Nerds, May 2022.
6. HBO’s “Sharp Objects” explores trauma, white women’s violence and the subject of child-abusing mothers, Black Girl Nerds, September 2018.
7. On its 25th Birthday ‘Seven’ Shatters White Devilry Tropes, Black Girl Nerds, June 2020.
8. White Devilry in ‘Black Swan’ Marks its 10th Birthday, Black Girl Nerds, May 2020.
9. When Good Cops are Still Bad Apples: The Unlikely Cases of ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘Magnolia,’ Black Girl Nerds, September 2020.
10. 30 Years Later, the Rental Anti-Blackness in ‘Pacific Heights’ Remains a Troubling Social Problem, Black Girl Nerds, August 2020.
11. ‘Mare of Easttown’ Continues Media Obsession with Dead and Missing White Women (and Humanizing Bad Cops), Black Girl Nerds, June 2021.
12. MicroReview: Pet Sematary Two and Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Embody White Devilry and the Horrors of Settler Colonialism