Sujatha Fernandes is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Her research has focused on the politics of everyday culture, from film discussion groups, rap music, and performance art in her first book Cuba Represent! to community media, murals, and popular fiestas in her second book on Venezuela, Who Can Stop the Drums? Through her work she has developed an ethnographic approach as a way of understanding urban politics and culture. Her third book, Close to the Edge explores whether the musical subculture of hip hop could create and sustain new global solidarities.
Fernandes has written about black popular culture, global hip hop, and social movements in both academic journals and popular forums, including The New York Times, The Nation, The Huffington Post, and Colorlines. Her work has been reprinted in several languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
As a young scholar, Fernandes has received several distinguished fellowships, including a three year Wilson-Cotsen Fellowship from the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University; a Mellon Foundation fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center; a Mid-Career Mellon Fellowship at the CUNY Graduate Center; a Mellon Dissertation fellowship; and an SSRC Dissertation Arts fellowship. In 2008, she was awarded the Felix Gross Award from the CUNY Academy for Arts and Sciences in recognition of outstanding research.
Fernandes has appeared on various media outlets, including NPR, The Story on American Public Radio, BBC, ABC Australia, Radio Nation on Air America, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, Worldfocus with Martin Savidge, WBAI, and Against the Grain on KPFA. She has been featured in New York's Daily News and her work has been cited in the New York Times and CBS News. She has given talks at many universities, museums, film festivals, and conferences.
Born and raised in Sydney, Australia to Indian parents, Fernandes now lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
Contact Sujatha Fernandes on sujathaf@yahoo.com
