{"id":179,"date":"2024-08-20T14:36:37","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T21:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/bsi\/?page_id=179"},"modified":"2026-02-24T09:25:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:25:43","slug":"affiliated-faculty","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/bsc\/affiliated-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff and Executive Committee"},"content":{"rendered":" \n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n Staff\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n \n
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\n Oneka LaBennett, Director<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender and Sexuality Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oneka LaBennett is an anthropologist and a leading scholar of Black girlhood studies, the African Diaspora in the U.S., Caribbean migration and Afro-Asian intimacies, popular culture and hip hop studies, Black feminism, and gender and environmental catastrophe in the Caribbean. LaBennett is the author of Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond<\/em> <\/a>(NYU Press 2024), She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn<\/em> <\/a>(NYU Press 2011), and co-editor of Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century<\/a><\/em> (UC Press 2012). Her Op-eds and public commentary on figures such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj have appeared in platforms such as Ms. Magazine, Newsweek, The Guardian, Politico,<\/em> and NBCNews.com. Elle Magazine<\/em> ranked her course, \u201cWomen in Hip Hop,\u201d among the top ten in a list of \u201cCollege Classes that Give Us Hope for the Next Generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Neud’s Saint-Cyr, Graduate Research Assistant\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Neud’s Saint-Cyr is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies & Ethnicity. Her current research focuses on Caribbean migration, Black Representation in the U.S. and across the Americas, and Black Internet usage.\u00a0More specifically, her dissertation, titled Both Sides Now: Tracing the Complexities of Haitian Life and Media Productions in Santo Domingo, <\/em>explores and complicates our understandings of the lived realities of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. The project offers a more nuanced view of Haitians living in the D.R. by centering Haitian voices in their stories and representations.<\/p>\n

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\n Akunna Uka, Graduate Volunteer\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Akunna Uka’s research currently focuses on school boards. She is interested in how school board members enact educational policies aimed at improving the academic success and well-being of Black students, with an emphasis on creating more equitable and supportive educational environments. She is a research assistant at the Rossier Center on Education Policy, Equity, and Governance (CEPEG). She is a former secondary teacher and administrator. She is a Ph.D. student in the USC Rossier School of Education. Akunna joined BSI as a graduate volunteer in Spring 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Lauren Wright, Undergraduate Social Media Liaison\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Lauren Wright is a junior at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she is majoring in Public Relations and Advertising. She is also pursuing a minor in Forensics and Criminality at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Her academic interests focus on strategic communications, advocacy and the role of media in advancing equity. She is passionate about promoting reform in healthcare bias and expanding access to education for communities that have historically been excluded. Lauren joined the Black Studies Center in Spring 2026, with the hope of expanding the scope of research, teaching, and engagement at the center.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n \n \n

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\n Executive Committee\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n Professor in the Department of French & Italian and the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity<\/span>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n

\n \n \n Edwin Hill\n\n <\/a>\n <\/h3>\n \n \n
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His book Black Soundscapes White Stages\u00a0<\/em>appeared with Johns Hopkins University Press in 2013. Recent scholarship appears in the edited volumes:\u00a0Sounds Senses\u00a0<\/em>(Liverpool UP, 2021),\u00a0The New Modernist Studies\u00a0<\/em>(Cambridge UP, 2021), and\u00a0Transpositions: Migration, Translation, Music\u00a0<\/em>(Liverpool UP, 2021). Public facing scholarship includes editorial pieces in\u00a033 Carats<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>a limited-edition hip hop fanzine. He is also the creator, host, and executive producer of\u00a0Dance Hubs,\u00a0<\/em>an audio docu-series about street dance and spaces of creative movement.\u00a0https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/consortium\/podcasts\/dance-hubs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n\n \n Director of the Black Studies Center<\/span>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n

\n \n \n Oneka LaBennett \n\n <\/a>\n <\/h3>\n \n \n
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See her bio above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div>\n \n

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\n\n \n Chair of the Department of French and Italian and Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French, with secondary appointments in the departments of American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature.<\/span>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n

\n \n \n Lydie Moudileno \n\n <\/a>\n <\/h3>\n \n \n
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Her research focuses on literary and cultural productions from the Francophone world, in particular the Caribbean, and West and Central Africa, as well as postcolonial France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div>\n \n

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\n\n \n Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, History, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.<\/span>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n

\n \n \n Francille Rusan Wilson \n\n <\/a>\n <\/h3>\n \n \n
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Wilson is an intellectual and labor historian whose current research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists, and black women\u2019s history during the Jim Crow era. Her book, The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950<\/em>, was awarded the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize for the best book in African American Women\u2019s history by the Association of Black Women Historians. Wilson was the inaugural director of USC\u2019s Black Studies Initiative\/Emerging Center. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Carter Godwin Woodson Scholars Medallion from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-179","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff and Executive Committee - USC Black Studies Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/bsc\/affiliated-faculty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff and Executive Committee - 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