Antonia Randolph

Antonia Randolph is a Black feminist queer scholar based in the Triangle. A graduate of Spelman College, she first learned about Pauli Murray’s life and work in a class on Black feminist thought. Her community work reflects her Black feminist values. She wrote love letters to Bresha Meadows, a Black girl who was incarcerated for killing her abuser, in support of the #FreeBresha campaign and hosted a quilt making session for The Monument Quilt for survivors of sexual and gendered violence. Locally, she works at UNC as a cultural sociologist and professor in the American Studies department. She’s a member of the Scholars’ Network on Masculinity and the Well-Being of African American Men and a participant in the Women of Color Leadership Project of the National Women’s Studies Association. Her first book, The Wrong Kind of Different: Challenging the Meaning of Diversity in American Classrooms (Teachers College 2012), examined the hierarchies elementary school teachers constructed among students of color.  She has also published in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, The Feminist Wire and Scalawag Magazine. Her current book project, That’s My Heart: Queering Intimacy in Hip-Hop Culture, examines portrayals of Black men’s intimate relationships in hip-hop culture.