Dr. Oneka LaBennett is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2002, and her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Wesleyan University in 1994.
Born in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. LaBennett’s research and teaching interests include popular culture; race, gender and consumption; urban anthropology; transnationalism and diaspora; and Caribbean migration.
Dr. LaBennett is the author of She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn (New York University Press, 2011), and editor of Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2012; co-edited with Daniel Martinez HoSang and Laura Pulido).
In addition to her contributions to academic journals and edited volumes, Dr. LaBennett has published Op-eds in Ms. Magazine and in The Huffington Post. Her Op-ed, “How Does Nicki Minaj Influence Black Girls? Ask Them,” was quoted in the April 2013 issue of Elle Magazine, and she recently wrote an essay entitled “Racialization,” in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (second edition, forthcoming, NYU Press).
