The Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. (Associate Professor) is a trained ethnomusicologist and classical singer who teaches the study of African American music, cultural anthropology, hip-hop, race and gender studies. She has taught in Baruch's Department of Fine and Performing Arts and presently holds an appointment in Sociology and Anthropology with a joint appointment in Black and Hispanic Studies.

Gaunt is an award-winning author. Her book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (NYUP, 2006) won the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for most distinguished monograph with a "convincing argument that the playsongs of African American girls are the foundation of African diasporic popular music-making. In a radical counter-history, she shows how African American girls—interlocutors who are triply minoritized through race, gender, and age—are producing music culture that has profound influences on popular music and the popular imagination" (SEM Prize Committee Report, 2007).

Aided by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, her publications have appeared in major journals and edited volumes including I Was Born to Use Mics: Listening to Nas' Illmatic edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai (2010).

In 2008, Gaunt was selected as one of 40 inaugural TED Fellows for her interdisciplinary work as a scholar, singer-songwriter and a digital native of social media. At the prestigious 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference she performed and presented her focus group work on Racism as a Resource (Agree to Be Offended & Stay Connected). She was later featured as a TED Fellow in a mini-documentary filmed at Baruch for a Nokia Responsiveness Campaign based on an ethnographic project launched with her students in 2008.

Since the release of her debut album Be the True Revolution in 2007, Gaunt continues to perform at venues like Joe's Pub among other venues in New York City as well as collaborating on gender-based texts with professional Indian choreographer Preeti Vasudevan and developing her own one-woman show based on her experiences with racism as a professor.

Gaunt is a proud graduate of the community college system. She holds a B.A. in Music from American University; an M.A. in Music from SUNY-Binghamton; and a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She previously taught music at the University of Virginia and NYU.

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