The Department of Black and Hispanic Studies

 

Kyra D. Gaunt is an associate professor of ethnomusicology and cultural anthropology with a joint appointment in Sociology/Anthropology. The author of The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (2006), Gaunt won the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the "most distinguished, published English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology." Her specialty is race, gender and the musical body in African American music. She teaches courses about hip-hop, cultural anthropology, and digital ethnography (You Tube). She taught previously at NYU and the University of Virginia.

A recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000 and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000-2001, her articles have appeared in Musical Quarterly and City and Society: Journal of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Urban, National, Transnational and Global Anthropology. Other works appear in Generations of Youth (1998), Language, Rhythm and Sound (1997), and Feminism, Multiculturalism and the Media (1995). Her work on gender in hip-hop will be featured in I Was Born to Use Mics: Listening to Nas' Illmatic, edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai (January 2009). Visit her website to download publications.

Her work is dedicated to voicing the transformation of race, gender and generation. She is conducting applied ethnographic research through a workshop titled Agree to be Offended: Curious Connections in Conversations of Race. This led her to be offered a fellowship to attend the distinguished TED2009 Conference (Technology, Entertainment and Design) devoted to "leveraging the power of ideas to change the world".

Gaunt is also a singer-songwriter and recording artist. She performed live in concert with Bobby McFerrin (2001) and released her debut CD Be the True Revolution in 2007. A graduate of the community college system, she received an B.A. in music at American University, an M.A. in music from SUNY-Binghamton, and a Ph.D in ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

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