RaShelle Peck

Picture of RaShelle R. Peck


Assistant Professor
Ethnic and Race Studies

EMAIL: rapeck@bmcc.cuny.edu

Office: S-623D

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

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).

Honors, Awards and Affiliations

Additional Information