T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Author and cultural critic, with a focus on black feminism

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting is a cultural critic, professor, feminist writer and researcher. She was named “a rising star among black public intellectuals” and “one of the country's most brilliant and prolific racial theorists" by public intellectual and author Michael Eric Dyson.

Sharpley-Whiting’s book “Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women” was released amid the Don Imus fiasco and immediately shot to the forefront of the fray. A provocative exploration of the collision of feminism and hip hop, Ms. Magazine noted that “This book delivers a riveting portrayal of hip hop, from the thumping rap music that serves as a soundtrack for Americas strip clubs to the predatory groupies who relentlessly pursue rap stars,” while The Source Magazine suggested that the volume is “For B-girls who embrace both the brashness of Lil Kim and the pro-feminism of Lauryn Hill…Sharpley-Whiting combines thought-provoking text with interviews that range from the rich (see Trina) to the regular (everyday women), giving a voice to today’s complex and contradictory females within hip hop.”

The author of three other books, Whiting is also co-editor of many other volumes, including “The Black Feminist Reader.” She has a forthcoming edited book on Barack Obama’s famous speech, “The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’.”  

Sharpley-Whiting has provided expert commentary on race, racism, drug laws and racial profiling, hip-hop culture and gender, and sex tourism, globalization and consumer culture, black women’s sexual politics, and American popular culture in varied venues such as Essence, The Village Voice, Women’s E-News, MSNBC, NPR, FOX News Live, Oprah & Friends Satellite Radio, Culture Shock Radio, and C-SPAN Book TV. In September 2007, she testified before Congress’s Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Sub-Committee on degrading images of women in the media.

Sharpley-Whiting is Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French at Vanderbilt University where she also directs the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and serves as Director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. She lectures widely throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, and Africa.