Dr. Rose to speak Thursday, March 29, 2007 in Ladue Auditorium

Tricia Rose was born and raised in New York City. She spent her childhood in Harlem and the Bronx. She graduated from Yale University where she received a BA in Sociology and then received her Ph.D. from Brown University in the field of American Studies. She has taught at NYU, University of California at Santa Cruz and is now a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

Professor Rose is most well-known for her ground-breaking book on the emergence of hip hop culture. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, published in 1994 by Wesleyan Press, has since become a classic. It is considered a foundational text for the study of hip hop, one that has defined what has eventually become a serious field of study. Black Noise won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1995 and was also considered one of the top 25 books of 1995 by the Village Voice. In 1999, Black Issues in Higher Education listed Black Noise one of its "Top Books of the Twentieth Century."

Most recently, Professor Rose has published another path-breaking book. Her oral history of black women's sexual life stories, Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy, puts everyday black women's sexual lives at the center of a conversation about women and sexuality which has generally marginalized these women's own stories. This book published in 2003 by Picador, received rave reviews. Publisher's weekly noted that Longing to Tell is: "Heartbreaking, inspiring, and brutally honest...as compelling as it is sorely needed."
 Distinguished scholar Cornel West says that: "For the first time we hear the painful and poignant voices of black women in all their humanity and complexity. Do not miss this path-blazing book!

Professor Rose lectures frequently to scholarly and general audiences on a wide range of topics relating to American cultural politics, black culture and music and gender. She has given lectures and presented papers abroad and at schools and research centers in the U.S. such as: Wesleyan, Harvard, Morehouse, The Whitney Museum of Art, UCLA, Spelman, Middlebury, Yale, Michigan, Columbia, University of Texas at Austin, The Brooklyn Museum, University of California at San Diego, at Irvine, at Santa Barbara and Princeton University. Rose has also been featured as an expert commentator on NPR and other national and local radio outlets, and on television. She is also the co-editor, with Andrew Ross, of a collection on youth music and youth culture entitled Microphone Fiends. More of her work can be found in articles appearing in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Essence, The New York Times and The Village Voice and on her website, www.triciarose.com.

At the heart of her work and professional life lies a deep interest examining the current legacies of racial and other forms of social injustice and exploring the creative and visionary strategies developed by artists, communities and movements to build a more just society.