she|her(s)

Associate Professor
David and Lucile Packard Professor

Feminist & Gender Studies

Heidi R. Lewis joined the Colorado College faculty as a Riley Scholars-in-Residence Program Dissertation Fellow during the 2010-11 AY. After earning her doctorate and serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor for one year, she entered the tenure-track and earned tenure in 2018.

Currently, Lewis is drafting a single-authored manuscript entitled “Make Rappers Rap Again!: Interrogating the Mumble Rap ‘Crisis’” (under contract with Oxford University Press). In it, she interrogates the ways Mumble Rap has been subjugated within “real” Hip Hop (or the most authentic), sometimes even expelled altogether and situated as the catalyst for its demise. For example, critics claim mumble rappers are ignorant about Hip Hop history, disrespectful toward “old heads” (or Hip Hop elders), too similar, unskilled, prone to rapping about nonsense, and too feminine (e.g., wearing nail polish and rapping about depression). Contrarily and controversially, Lewis argues Mumble Rap is, in fact, real Hip Hop. She does so by problematizing real Hip Hop norms for engaging with its origins and old heads; recovering longstanding debates about what Hip Hop has been, is, and should be; demonstrating the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics congruent with real Hip Hop; taking a comprehensive approach to examining the Mumble Rap sound; geographically situating Mumble Rap as southern; and examining how Mumble Rap challenges dominant narratives about Hip Hop masculinity. Finally, Lewis calls for a reconsideration of Hip Hop’s commitment to situated analyses and more precise attention to the ways scholars understand and name themselves in Hip Hop Studies, an opportune conversation as 2023 is the 30th anniversary of Hip Hop Studies and the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop.

Most recently, Lewis published "Expertise" in the second volume of Rethinking Women's and Gender Studies edited by Catherine M. Orr and Anne Braithwaite (2023) and In Audre's Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (2021), with Dana Asbury and Jazlyn Andrews (Feminist & Gender Studies '17), for Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winner Sharon Dodua Otoo's Witnessed Series. She also has an essay forthcoming in Layli Maparyan's Womanism Rising: Womanist Studies Is Here. She has also contributed to The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, and Unteilbar: Bündnisse gegen Rassismus, NewBlackMan, NPR's Here and Now, Ms. Magazine, KRCC, Bitch Media, and Act Out, and given talks at Vanderbilt, the Gender and the Brain Conference, the University of Georgia, the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, Portland State, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt, and other organizations in the U.S., Canada, Spain, and Germany. For more information about her projects, please visit FemGeniuses.

Last, but certainly not least, Lewis is most proud of and fulfilled by her personal life. Most notably, 2023 marks her 20th anniversary with her husband Antonio, their son Junior's first year at Morgan State University, a Historically Black University (HBCU), and their daughter Chase's journey toward an HBCU all her own. 

Courses

• FG110 Introduction to Feminist & Gender Studies
• FG200 Feminist Theory
• FG240 Hip Hop and Feminism
• FG212 Critical Media Studies
• FG214 Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlin (study abroad)
• FG309 Critical Whiteness Studies
• FG312 Black Feminist Theory
• FG316 Critical Race Feminism
• FG416 Senior Seminar