Alix ChapmanAssistant Professor of African American Studies

Alix Chapman is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. He received his BA from Washington State University and his MA and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Chapman teaches courses on the anthropology of African Diasporic gender and sexuality while centering Black Feminisms and Black Queer Studies as well as courses on black radical aesthetics in music and performance.

Professor Chapman is currently completing a book tentatively titled Project Music: Black Gender and Sexuality in New Orleans Bounce. Bounce music is a form of hip hop that emerged in New Orleans public housing projects in the 1990s. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and mass displacement of black New Orleans black queer performers, often referred to as “sissies,” became prominent performers and recording artists.

Project Music investigates the social significance and aesthetic form of bounce music as an expression of blackness marked by deviance, within the socio-historical context of post-Katrina New Orleans and neo-plantation development. He frames the bounce music scene as a social network for the production of black space and community in a time of crisis.

Professor Chapman's research and teaching is aimed at acknowledging the diversity of realities throughout racialized, ethnic, and queer diasporas. As a former professor of Women's Studies at Spelman College, he held the first appointment dedicated to Black Queer Studies at a historically black college or university and helped fashion the first trans inclusive admissions policy at an HBCU. Professor Chapman has contributed to numerous transnational anti-war and anti-global capitalist campaigns through his performing with the former Seattle based ensemble, The Infernal Noise Brigade.