Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He has written and lectured extensively on Black popular culture and music, Black masculinity, sexism and homophobia in Black communities, and Black digital humanities. His books include Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002); Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003); New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005); and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, forthcoming from NYU Press in April, 2013. He is also co-editor (with Murray Foreman) of That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2nd Edition, 2011). Neal hosts the weekly video webcast, Left of Black. He is the founder and managing editor of the blog NewBlackMan (in Exile). He is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio; he contributes to several on-line media outlets like The Huffington Post and Ebony.com; and he is featured in several documentaries including Byron Hurt’s Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (2006).
This event is supported by the UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, the Department of English, the Department of Communication, and the Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.
The YouTube videos referenced during the lecture are available here:
Featured picture taken by Elon University in 2010.