Shanté Paradigm Smalls is a scholar, artist, teacher, and writer who works at the intersection of blackness, popular culture, critical theory, and performance. I am currently finishing my first scholarly manuscript, Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City which won the 2016 CLAGS Fellowship Award for Best First Book Project in LGBTQ Studies. My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Black Scholar,GLQ,Criticism, Lateral, Women & Performance,  American Behavioral Scientist, Suspect Thoughts, and forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Queerness and Music.

photo credit: Molly Mann