Join us for "Drop and Give Us Fitty: A Conversation on Hip Hop's Anniversary as the Culture" with Dionne Bailey, assistant professor of history at Colgate, and guest speaker Regina N. Bradley, an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South. Bradley is an alumna Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow (Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Spring 2016), associate professor of English and African diaspora studies at Kennesaw State University, a faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal, and co-host of the critically acclaimed southern hip hop podcast Bottom of the Map with music journalist Christina Lee. 

A prominent public voice and leading scholar on contemporary southern Black life and hip hop culture, Bradley's work has been featured on a range of media outlets including Netflix’s hip hop docuseries Hip-Hop Evolution, Washington Post, NPR, and Atlanta Journal Constitution. In May, 2017, Dr. Bradley delivered a TEDx talk, "The Mountaintop Ain't Flat," about the significance of hip hop in bridging the American Black South to the present and future.  

Dr. Bradley is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Chronicling Stankonia: the Rise of the Hip-Hop South.  Chronicling Stankonia explores how Atlanta, GA hip hop duo OutKast and hip hop influences the culture of the Black American South in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement. Chronicling Stankonia was named one of the “Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2022. She is also the editor of An OutKast Reader, a collection of essays about OutKast, and co-editor of the third edition of That’s the Joint!: the Hip Hop Studies Reader with Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal.

Dr. Bradley can be reached through her website.