n. a state of deep, serious contemplation, abstraction, or daydreaming. A 16th-century term to describe melancholic reverie—the term used the color “brown” to describe gloom, as we use “blue” today. Brown(ed) Studies leans into daydreaming and informal musings as a freedom strategy, an experiment in Black feminist writing that moves beyond academic writing. This collection of voice recordings are quick and dirty studies or reflections on my creative and scholarly research, the “-ed” at the end alluding to a Black feminist coding of academic writing as a collaborative process of meaning-making (Dinesh) between the writer and the reader/listener, the artist and the audience, the living and the dead. Echoing the process of heating sugar in a pan until it produces a deep color and complex flavor, “brown(ed)” articulates my desire to cultivate a scholarly writing practice (and voice) that is multilayered, active, in-process, willing to be made and remade, anchored in ancestral memory, and informed by community.