Uri serves as co-editor of the book series Minoritarian Aesthetics (NYU Press).

A self-identified performance historian, his research—a synthesis of art history & visual culture, feminist theory, performance studies, and Black diaspora studies—is primarily centered on African diasporic artistic production, with a particular focus on aesthetic and performance cultures.

He is the author of Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (NYU Press, 2015), the first comprehensive history of Black women's performance art. Dr. McMillan was awarded three major book prizes for this research: the William Sanders Scarborough Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Study of Black American Literature or Culture by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History and the Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theatre, Drama, or Performance Studies, both from the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR).

Dr. McMillan has traveled throughout the United States as well as internationally--such as Scotland, Denmark, Italy, and South Africa-- to deliver lectures on African diasporic artistic production. He has also participated in various lectures, roundtables, and artist dialogues at several museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, Hammer Museum, MoMA/PS1, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Nottingham Contemporary (UK), the California African American Museum (CAAM), and The Los Angeles County of Art (LACMA), among others.

His forthcoming book is entitled Airbrush, Instamatics, and Funk: Art, Pop, and New York City’s Long 1970s. In this dynamic cultural history, he traces a network of select New York City-based artists who restlessly & promiscuously moved across fields of cultural production in dual efforts: to creatively explore new aesthetic forms and melt the edges between seemingly disparate mediums and disciplines.

Dr. McMillan's essays and interviews have appeared in The Routledge Companion to African American Art History, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Aperture, GLQ, and ASAP/Journal. His work is also featured in numerous museum-based publications for the Studio Museum in Harlem as well as Christina Quarles (MCA Chicago) and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985: New Perspectives (Brooklyn Museum).

Dr. McMillan received his Ph.D. in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University. His dissertation was awarded the Sylvia Boone Prize from the Department of Art History and the Department of African American Studies for best-written in African-American art history. He lives and works in Los Angeles.