[2] In 2020, Moten was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for "[c]reating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life.

"[3] Fred Moten was born in Las Vegas in 1962 and was raised Catholic in the segregated black neighborhood on the western end of the city.

His interest in sociopolitical discourse, the work of Noam Chomsky, civic outreach, and political activism led him away from his studies.

[4] Moten makes considerable intellectual contributions to the discourses of black studies, poetry and poetics, critical race theory and contemporary American literature.

[9] He has served on numerous editorial boards including American Quarterly, Callaloo, Social Text, and Discourse.

Saidiya Hartman discusses the photograph as well, in her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval.

In May 2024, Moten gave a keynote lecture at an academic conference: "Jews and Black Theory: Conceptualizing Otherness in the Twenty-First Century," held at Harvard University.