My scholarship examines “how knowers and systems of knowledge are situated,” cultivating “reflexivity about the impact of social location, power asymmetries, and cultural contexts on the knowledge process.”1 Because I am a Black feminist scholar, I most often focus on Black people, and in all cases, my approach is decidedly intersectional. Primarily relying on discourse analysis, I also focus on how some ways of knowing and making sense of the world are rendered unintelligible but also how discourse is a site where power is both enacted and negotiated. Since earning tenure, this has resulted in a book manuscript, an edited collection, chapters in three edited collections, and an online essay.
Two of these projects are indebted to relationships I built teaching my study abroad course for the past near-decade. “‘Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlin’: A Case Study in Intersectional and Transnational Feminist Alliance Work” (2019) details the pedagogical philosophies, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies guiding the course to signify the importance of taking transnational and other critical approaches to examining the experiences of marginalized people, particularly how they resist but also reproduce subjugation. Similarly, In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (2021), co-edited with Dana Asbury and Jazlyn Andrews, examines the resistive and generative experiences of Black and women of color in Berlin and the U.S., focusing on how they navigate subjugation and address the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity.
Two other projects reflect on the state of field, Womanism and Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS), in particular. In “If We Bury the Ratchet, We Bury Black Women: A New Directions Analysis of Married to Medicine,” I grapple with false dichotomies that situate “ratchet” Black women on reality TV as antithetical to Black “progress.” To the contrary, I illustrate the ways these texts have the potential to contribute meaningfully to Womanist and Black feminist discourse. In this case, I argue they give us the occasion to collectively think about and discuss reproductive theories and politics without centering any one individual at the expense of the family and without mimicking racist patriarchies. In “Expertise,” published in the second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies (2023), I examine the ways narratives about expertise function within and frame WGS. Intellectuals in our field understand the ways particular notions of and relationships with expertise have functioned as means of domination and subjugation. However, I argue our struggles with expertise sometimes result in what I call the “overdetermination of accessibility,” an overdetermined commitment to ensuring mass legibility and a simplistic rejection of “elitist” scholarship, which poses dangerous implications for those who struggle acutely with being engaged with as knowers.
I also grapple with the epistemological in my public scholarship, evidenced by “On Banning Critical Race Theory in Schools: ‘The Pursuit of a More Just World’ Requires Confronting Racism and Privilege,” which was published in “Journey to Justice: A Critical Race Theory Primer,” a joint initiative between Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s Studies Association, and the Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice. Here, I summarize and discuss a letter I sent to the Board of Education Directors representing Falcon District 49 in Colorado Springs after they moved to ban Critical Race Theory. While the district eventually approved the ban, my essay aims to support students, teachers, activists, families, scholars, and others committed to resisting ill-intended misinterpretations and misrepresentations of intellectual projects that center systemically and systematically oppressed and subjugated communities.
Last, but not least, in Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis” (Oxford UP, 2025), I interrogate the ways Mumble Rap has been subjugated within “real” Hip Hop (or the most authentic), sometimes even expelled altogether and situated as the catalyst for its demise. For example, critics claim mumble rappers are ignorant about Hip Hop history, disrespectful toward “old heads” (or Hip Hop elders), too similar, unskilled, prone to rapping about nonsense, and too feminine (e.g., wearing nail polish and rapping about depression). Contrarily and controversially, I argue Mumble Rap is, in fact, real Hip Hop. First, it has galvanized the genre for over a decade. Also, like many rappers before them, mumble rappers are certainly rebellious. However, intracommunal tension and rebellion are Hip Hop mainstays. So, I problematize real Hip Hop norms for engaging with its origins and old heads by recovering longstanding debates about what Hip Hop has been, is, and should be. I then demonstrate the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics congruent with real Hip Hop, situating Mumble Rap as conversant with other, oft-ignored, Hip Hop cornerstones like illegibility, production, and the subgenre. I also take a comprehensive approach to examining the Mumble Rap sound, paying special attention to flow and production. To explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap and take a more complicated approach to examining the subgenre, I make two other, critical moves. First, I geographically situate Mumble Rap as southern, because most artists associated with the subgenre are from the South. They also create and collaborate in ways that are notably conversant with southern Hip Hop. I then examine how Mumble Rap challenges dominant narratives about Hip Hop masculinity, focusing especially on mumble rappers’ attention to mental health. Finally, I call for a reconsideration of Hip Hop’s commitment to situated analyses. From my view, Hip Hop will never die. Therefore, it will become increasingly difficult to engage all of its complexities routinely and substantially, which could result in further simplification or even inattention. So, I call for attending more precisely to the ways scholars understand and name themselves in Hip Hop Studies. As was the case with Hip Hop Feminism, Postmodern Hip Hop Studies, and other subfields, I argue the field should be more deliberately comprised of Old School and Golden Age scholars, Nas and Tupac scholars, Gangsta Rap and Shiny Suit Era scholars, scholars of the elements or particular ones, and Midwest or Southwest Hip Hop scholars, to name a few. In addition to calling for scholars to think more carefully about what real Hip Hop is, “Make Rappers Rap Again” encourages us to ask more critical questions about who we are, an opportune conversation as 2023 is the 30th anniversary of Hip Hop Studies and the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop.
1“Women’s Studies Scholarship: A Statement by the National Women’s Studies Association Field Leadership Working Group,” National Women’s Studies Association, 2013.
Dr. Heidi R. Lewis 