Oneka LaBennett (symposium co-organizer) is Co-Director of Research for the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP) and Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Anthropology at Fordham University. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2002. Her book manuscript, which is under contract with New York University Press, examines how Brooklyn’s West Indian adolescent girls negotiate transnational racial and gender identities as they interact with American and West Indian popular culture. Under the auspices of the BAAHP, LaBennett is heading a hip hop history initiative which focuses on recording oral histories that document women’s contributions to hip hop music and culture. Recently she organized a ”Women in Bronx Hip Hop” roundtable discussion featuring independent female artists. Her research interests include popular youth culture, race, gender, West Indian migration and transnationalism.
n.d. “Consuming Identities: Consumption, Gender and Transnationalism Among West Indian Adolescent Girls in Brooklyn.” Book manuscript, under contract with New York University Press.
n.d. “Histories and ‘Her Stories’ from the Bronx: Excavating Hidden Hip Hop Narrative,” accepted for publication in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History.
n.d. “Introduction-The Bronx African American History Project and the Black Scholarly Tradition,” by Brian Purnell and Oneka LaBennett accepted for publication in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History.
2006. “Reading Buffy and ‘Looking Proper’: Race, Gender and Consumption among West Indian Girls in Brooklyn” in Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness,” edited by Deborah Thomas and Kamari Clarke Maxine Clarke.
2004. “West Indian Americans.” In Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures,” Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember, eds. New Haven: Kluwer/Plenum under the auspices of the Human Relations Area Files, Inc.
