Tricia Rose


Tricia Rose is an American sociologist and author who pioneered scholarship on hip hop. Her studies mainly probe the intersectionality of pop music and gender. Now at Brown University, she is a professor of Africana Studies and the director of the Systemic Racism and Resilience Project at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. In 2025, Rose launched , a dynamic web-based experience that blends a systems analysis of racism with compelling character-driven stories, supported by rigorous research. It demonstrates the power of Black life and culture to originate rich modes of human resistance and resilience. Rose also co-hosted a podcast, The Tight Rope, with Cornel West.

Early life and education

Born in New York City, Rose lived in Harlem until 1970 when, at age seven, her family moved from their tenement building to Co-op City, a new and large complex of cooperative apartments in the northeast Bronx.
Rose earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Yale University. Earning a PhD degree in American studies, partly under George Lipsitz, from Brown University, Rose became the first person in the United States to write a doctoral dissertation on hip hop.

Academia and authorship

For nine years, Rose taught Africana studies at New York University. In 2002, she moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz, and in July 2003 became chair of its American Studies department.
Now at Brown University, Rose is the Chancellor's Professor of Africana Studies. From July 2013, to July 2024 she served as Director of the Center for Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and now directs the Systemic Racism Project based at CSREA.
Rose's first book, Black Noise, emerging from her doctoral dissertation on hip hop, sparked academic recognition of this subculture's legacy. The Village Voice placed it among the top 25 books of 1994, and the Before Columbus Foundation, in 1995, gave it an American Book Award.

Books

  • author, '
  • author, '
  • author, '
  • author, '
  • contributor and, with Andrew Ross, editor, ''''

    Selected videos

*
*
*
  • , Tricia Rose at TEDxBrownUniversity
Category:1962 births
Category:Brown University faculty
Category:American feminist writers
Category:Hip-hop people
Category:Living people
Category:African-American gender relations
Category:Black studies scholars
Category:Post–civil rights era in African-American history
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:American gender studies academics
Category:American Book Award winners
Category:People from Co-op City, Bronx
Category:People from Harlem
Category:Brown University alumni
Category:American women podcasters
Category:American podcasters