Mark A. Neal, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies and Chair of African and African American Studies

Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African & African American Studies and Chair of the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University where he offers courses on Black Masculinity, Popular Culture, and Digital Humanities, including signature courses on Michael Jackson & the Black Performance Tradition, and The History of Hip-Hop, which he co-teaches with Grammy Award Winning producer 9^th Wonder (Patrick Douthit).

He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002) and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013).  The 10^th Anniversary edition of Neal’s New Black Man was published in February of 2015 by Routledge. Neal is co-editor of That's the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge), now in its second edition. Additionally Neal host of the video webcast Left of Black, which is produced in collaboration with the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. You can follow him on Twitter at @NewBlackMan and IG at @BookerBBBrown

Contact Info: 

Office Location:	Science Building, 243F, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:	+1 919 684 3987
Email Address:
Web Pages:	http://leftofblack.tumblr.com/ https://www.instagram.com/bookerbbbrown/?hl=en

Teaching (Spring 2024):

• AAAS 331.01, BLACK POPULAR CULTURE Synopsis

  Smith Wrhs C104, Tu 01:40 PM-04:10 PM

  (also cross-listed as VMS 230.01)

• AAAS 336.01, BLK PERFORM: M. JACKSON/PRINCE Synopsis

  East Duke 204B, W 06:15 PM-08:45 PM

  (also cross-listed as MUSIC 336.01, VMS 353.01)

Education:

Ph.D.	State University of New York, Buffalo	1996
M.A.	State University of New York, Fredonia	1993
B.A.	State University of New York, Fredonia	1987

Specialties:

Cultural Studies
African-American Literature

Research Interests:

I am engaged in interdisciplinary scholarly work in the fields of African-American, Cultural, and Gender Studies that draws upon modes of inquiry informed by the fields of literary theory, urban sociology, social history, postmodern philosophy, Queer theory and most notably popular culture. My broad project is to interrogate popular culture--music, television, film, and literature--produced within the context of Afro-diasporic expressive cultures. It is my belief that popular culture represents an arena of knowledge that has a profound impact on societal and cultural norms in the United States and globally, but one that has been largely underscrutinized as a "serious" site of scholarly and theoretical study. It is also my belief that commercial popular culture represents a distinct site of ideological production, thus my own work aims to engage the ideological undercurrents within commercial popular culture particularly within the context of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity.

Keywords:

African American business enterprises • African American mass media • African Americans • African Americans and mass media • African Americans in art • African Americans in popular culture • African Americans in the motion picture industry • African Americans on television • Black Cultural Studies • Black Masculinity • Black Popular Culture • Black Popular Music • Digital media • Music • Urban African Americans • Working class African Americans

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

• Matthew Sommoroff  
• Micah Gilmer  
• Jenny Woodruff  
• Jeremy Smith  
• Alisha Gaines  
• Bianca Robinson  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Neal, MA, New Black Man (April, 2005), Routledge (Reviews: The Washington Post, May 22, 2005; Chicago Sun-Times, May 29, 2005; Free Inquiry, August/September 2005, 55; Journal of American Culture, December 2005, Vol. 28 Issue 4, 448-449;.) [resources.asp]
2. Neal, MA; Forman, M, That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (September, 2004), Routledge (Reviews: The Boston Globe October 7, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/arti cles/2004/10/07/scholars_capture_essence_of_ hip_hop/ The Dallas Morning News November 26, 2004 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ fea/entertainment/stories/112704dnlivbooks.3 f7fd.html.)
3. Neal, MA, Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (June, 2003), Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
4. Neal, MA, Soul babies: Black popular culture and the post-soul aesthetic (February, 2013), pp. 1-210, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, ISBN 9780203950623 [doi]  [abs]
5. Neal, MA, What the music said black popular music and black public culture (January, 2013), pp. 1-198, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, ISBN 9780415920728 [doi]
6. Mark Anthony Neal, Freedom Summer Remembered: A Conversation with Denise Nicholas, THE BACKLIST—A PUBLISHING AND LITERARY NEWSLETTER OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN INTEREST (October, 2005) [html]
7. Neal, MA, White Chocolate: Teena Marie and Lewis Taylor, Popular Music, vol. 24 no. 3 (October, 2005), Cambridge, ISSN 1474-0095
8. Mark Anthony Neal, "Rhythm and Bullshit: The Slow Decline of R&B (Rhythm and Blues)", ALTERNET.ORG (July 8, 2005) [available here]
9. Neal, MA, The Tortured Soul of Marvin Gaye and R. Kelly, in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2004, edited by Hart, M (October, 2004), Da Capo Press
10. Neal, MA, A Way Out of No Way: Jazz, Hip Hop and Black Social Improvisation, in The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, edited by Heble, A; Fischlin, D (Spring, 2004), Wesleyan
11. Neal, MA, The Birth of New Blackness: The Family Stand’s Moon in Scorpio, in Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock N’ Roll, edited by Horse, KC (January, 2004), Palgrave Macmillan
12. Mark Anthony Neal, It's Your Nigger Problem, Not Hip-Hop's, BLACK AGENDA REPORT (December 6, 2006) [php]

Conferences Organized

• Curator : Black Thought 2.0: New Media and the Future of Black Studies. December 01, 2012, Curator : Black Thought 2.0: New Media and the Future of Black Studies, April 6-7, 2012