CSSD is thrilled to welcome Professor Shana L. Redmond as our new Faculty Director. Professor Redmond (she|her) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and holds a joint position at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER), one of CSSD’s five partners. A writer and interdisciplinary scholar of race, culture, and power, she is the author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU Press, 2014) and Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020), which received a 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation with the special citation of the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism. Named a “Best Book of 2020” by National Public Radio (NPR), Everything Man received multiple awards including the Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music and the Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society. In addition to being co-editor of and contributor to Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke UP, 2016), she is co-editor of the University of California Press series “Phono: Black Music and the Global Imagination.” She has published chapters, articles, and essays in outlets including The Futures of Black Radicalism, Current Musicology, Black Camera, Black Music Research Journal, Race & Class, Women & Music, and Brick: A Literary Journal as well as NPR, the BBC, Boston Review, and Mother Jones. Her work with artists and labels includes the critical liner essay to the soundtrack vinyl release for Jordan Peele’s film Us (Waxwork Records, 2019) as well as the notes for String Quartets, Nos. 1-12 by Wadada Leo Smith (TUM Records, 2022) and Nina Simone’s You’ve Got to Learn (Verve, 2023).
Professor Redmond’s current project is a forensic listening to Black life before mourning, a book she has been researching and writing this past year as a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. Shana Redmond brings not just her academic and artistic vision to CSSD but also extensive leadership experience, most notably in her three-year presidential term with the American Studies Association (2021-2024).
“I am deeply committed to collaborative study; I see its need and believe in its transformative potential. It is that focus on collaboration in thought within CSSD that drew me to this position and I look forward to the insights and knowledge that our working groups and programming will produce.”
- PROFESSOR SHANA L. REDMOND