Shante Smalls

Shanté Paradigm Smalls is a scholar, artist, and writer. Their teaching, writing, and research focus on Black popular culture in music, film, visual art, genre fiction, and other aesthetic forms. Dr. Smalls’ first book, Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City, which won the 2016 CLAGS Fellowship Award for best manuscript in LGBTQ Studies and the 2022-2023 New York City Book Award from the New York Society Library, was published by NYU Press in June 2022.

Their writing has appeared in The Arrow, QED, The Black Scholar, GL/Q, Women & Performance, Criticism, Lateral, American Behavioral Scientist, Suspect Thoughts, Syndicate Literature, the Feminist Press's Queer and Now anthology (forthcoming), and the Oxford Handbook of Queerness and Music.

Smalls was most recently an Associate Professor of Black Studies in the Department of English, Faculty in the Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Institute, and Founding Co-Director of the LGBTQ+ Center at St. John’s University where they worked from 2014-2023. They were also an Assistant Professor of American Studies at University of New Mexico from 2013-2014, as well as a Visiting Assistant Professor/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Davidson College from 2011-2013.

Smalls has held fellowships from the University of Rochester Humanities Center, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly Woodrow Wilson Foundation), and the James Weldon Johnson Fellowship at Emory University.

Smalls received their PhD in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, their MA in Performance Studies from NYU, and their BA in English and Theatre from Smith College.

They are a Series Editor of Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality at Temple University Press

To see more, go to Dr. Smalls’s website: http://shanteparadigm.com