NAME Mark Anthony Neal
PROFESSION Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies
HOME BASE John Hope Franklin Center
AGE 39
“If you google ‘black male feminist,’ I should be the first thing that pops up,” he jokes.
And if you Google ‘hip hop studies,’ you will undoubtedly find his name as one of America’s leading scholars on black popular culture.
Studying English in college, Neal became comfortable examining text, whether it was literature or gangsta rap. But since he found the former to be rather boring and dreaded a potential career studying “18th- or 19th-century anything,” he opted for the latter.
He is one of an increasing number of professors bringing popular culture into the classroom and finding success. Even though skeptics in academia continue to question what significance Dr. Dre has in scholarly settings, Neal managed to fill 30 seats for an 8:30 a.m. hip-hop studies class last year. He is, however, wary about the potential to be pigeonholed into the role of “professor of rap.”
He says that hip-hop instead incorporates his broader academic interests in race, sexuality and gender in popular culture.
“The fact that I was hired [in Fall 2004] to be a professor of black popular culture suggests that folks understand the value of what I’m doing and what it means to have a presence like myself here in AAAS or the University in general,” he says.
Neal helped organize AAAS’s “Hip-Hop Appreciation Week” in January and says he would like to open a center on black popular culture some time in the future. As for the next year, he will be working on two books and, of course, teaching.
So even though he’s studying Trick Daddy and Jay-Z, he’s still a professor baby, we just want you to know....
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