Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls (They/Them)
Associate Professor
Faculty, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies
Co-Founding Director, LGBTQ+ Center
BA, Smith College
MA, New York University
PhD, New York University
ON LEAVE ACADEMIC YEAR 2022-2023:
Humanities Center External Fellow, University of Rochester
(t) 718-990-2936
Professional affiliations: African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), American Literature Society, American Studies Association, Association for the Study of Arts in the Present/ASAP, Black Performance Theory, Black Women’s Studies Association, IASPM: International Association for the Study of Music, Society for American Music
Awards and distinctions:
*Winner, New York City Book Award, New York Society Library (2022-2023)
*Humanities Center Fellow, University of Rochester Humanities Center (2022-2023)
*Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, Emory University (2019-2020)
*Citizens and Scholars (fka Woodrow Wilson National Foundation) Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellowship/Mellon Foundation Fellowship (2017-2018)
*St. John’s University Faculty Recognition Award (2021, 2019, 2016, 2017)
*CLAGS Fellowship Award for Best Manuscript in LGBTQ Studies (2016)
*St. John’s University Center for Teaching and Learning Fellowship (2016-2018)
*HASTAC Mentor (2015-2016)
*American Psychoanalytic Association Mentor Program (2013)
*Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2013)
Research Focus: Performance Studies, 19th C- 21st C Black Studies, Hip Hop Studies, Gender & Sexuality, Aesthetics, Media Studies, Music & Sound Studies, Speculative Studies, The Black Pacific, Psychoanalysis, Ethnographic methods (esp. interviews, participant-observation, field research)
Shanté Paradigm Smalls is a scholar, artist, and writer. Smalls’s teaching and research focuses 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 (June 2022, NYU Press), winner of the 2016 CLAGS Fellowship Award for best manuscript in LGBTQ Studies and the 2022-2023 New York Society Library New York City Book Award, was published June 2022. Hip Hop Heresies is the first of its kind—placing queerness, hip hop, and black aesthetics in conversation with one another to argue that New York City hip hop cultural production from the 1970s to the mid-2010s inherently employs “queer articulations” of race, gender, and sexuality.
Smalls’s writing has appeared or will appear in The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture & Politics, QED: A Journal of GLTBQ Worldmaking, ArtLeaks Gazette (SUNY Albany), The Black Scholar, GL/Q, Criticism, Women & Performance, Lateral, American Behavioral Scientist, Suspect Thoughts, Syndicate Literature, and the Oxford Handbook of Queerness and Music.
Dr. Smalls is currently an Associate Professor of Black Studies and Faculty in the Institute for Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, as well as the Founding Co-Director of the LGBTQ+ Center at St. John’s University. Dr. 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 former Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Davidson College, the Fellowship for Citizen and Scholars (formerly Woodrow Wilson), and the James Weldon Johnson Postdoctoral Fellowship at Emory University. They will be a Humanities Center Fellow at University of Rochester in 2022-2023.
They are a Series Editor of Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality at Temple University Press
To see more, go to Dr. Smalls’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/shanteparadigm
July 2022: NPR/WNYC “All of It” Interview
DMC and Greg Pak event (Oct 2015)
PhD Students
SJU:
Sonia Adams (ABD)
Nouf Arige
Stephen Ikeme (ABD)
*Amity Nathaniel (ABD), Lecturer, Department of English, Guttman Community College, CUNY
*Justine Wilson (ABD), Faculty, Bard Early College, Queens Campus
*Simone Smith (ABD)
Other Universities:
*Angela Mosely, IDSVA (ABD)
Defended:
Dr. Raquel Corona, (defended Jan 2021), Doctoral Lecturer, Queensborough Community College, CUNY
*Dr. Regina Duthely (defended 3/30/2017), Assistant Professor, English, University of Puget Sound
Dr. Meghan Gilbert-Hickey (defended 5/16/2016), Assistant Professor, Guttman Community College, CUNY
Dr. Tina Iemma (defended Oct 2021), Doctoral Lecturer, Department of English, Medgar Evers College, CUNY
*Dr. Samantha McCalla (defended April 2020), Associate Director, Donor Relations, Office of Advancement, St. John’s University
Dr. Erica McCrystal (defended 4/5/2016), Graduate Director of the Master of Education in Educational Practice, Centenary University
Dr. Tejan Waszak (defended March 2020), Lecturer & Course Co-Director, UW: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, Columbia University
Dr. Timm Woods (9/05/2017), Professional D&D GameMaster
*:Chair of committee
Other Universities:
Christine Capetola, UT Austin (defended April 2019): Assistant Professor, UC Fullerton
Marthia Fuller, University of New Mexico (defended June 2020)
Maria Eugenia López-Garcia, University of New Mexico (defended July 2019): Assistant Professor, Museum and Exhibition Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago
MA Students:
Jaymi L. Grullon (completed May 2022)*
Kayla Wilson Preston (completed April 2020)*
Geziell Nash (completed May 2019)
Michael Benjamin (completed May 2017)*
*: Thesis adviser
Other Universities:
Katrina DeWees, Wesleyan University (completed May 2018)*