Shanté Paradigm Smalls is a scholar, artist, and writer. Smalls’ teaching and research focuses on Black popular culture in music, film, visual art, genre fiction, and other aesthetic forms. They recently finished their first scholarly manuscript, Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City (forthcoming NYU Press),which won the 2016 CLAGS Fellowship Award for best manuscript in LGBTQ Studies. Dr. Smalls is currently an Associate Professor of Black Studies at St. John’s University in New York City.