RaShelle Peck

Assistant Professor
Ethnic and Race Studies
EMAIL: rapeck@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: S-623E
Office Hours:
Phone: +1 (212) 776--6236
RaShelle R. Peck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at BMCC. Before coming to BMCC, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) at Rutgers University (2019-2020) and in the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis with the Black Bodies Seminar (2018-2019). Prior to that, she was the director and faculty-in-residence at the Afrikan Heritage House at Oberlin College (2015-2017). She teaches courses in African history and has taught courses in African politics, Black music, and Black performance studies.
Expertise
Her research interests include Kenyan and US popular culture, hip hop studies, Black performance theory, music studies, Afrofuturism, and gender and sexuality studies.
Degrees
The Ohio State University, Ph.D. Comparative Studies, 2014
Courses Taught
- African civilizations from the pre-historic cultures in East Africa to the decline of the West African kingdom of Songhai in 1596 are examined.
- Africa from the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade to the end of Colonialism in the late twentieth century is examined. The effect of Colonialism on economic and cultural patterns in the African diaspora is explored.
Research and Projects
Her current book project, Nairobi Hip Hop Flow, is an interdisciplinary study that combines ethnography, archival work, political history, and music and performance analysis to account for the emergence and innovations of Nairobi’s rap culture. This project importantly centers on the embodied performance practices of rap practitioners by studying how these artists cultivate notions of diaspora and gender as a performative aesthetic.
Publications
“Love, Struggle, and Compromises: The Political Seriousness of Nairobi Underground Hip Hop.” African Studies Review, 61.2 (2018).
“Political Strictures and Latex Caricatures in Kenya: Buttressing Mzee Masculinity in The XYZ Show.” Research in African Literatures, 44.1 (2013).