Dr. Heidi R. Lewis is President of the National Women’s Studies Association and David & Lucile Packard Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College. Her scholarship and teaching are primarily focused on Feminism (emphasis on Black Feminisms), Hip Hop (emphasis on Rap), and Critical Media Studies.

Lewis is the author of a forthcoming single authored manuscript entitled “Make Rappers Rap Again!: Interrogating the Mumble Rap ‘Crisis’” (Oxford University Press). In it, she contends with the claim that Mumble Rap is not real Hip Hop (or the most authentic or pure Hip Hop), because mumble rappers are ignorant about Hip Hop history, disrespectful toward Hip Hop elders, too similar, unskilled, prone to rapping about nonsense, and too soft or feminine. Some critics have even declared Hip Hop dead (again). Contrarily and perhaps controversially, Lewis argues Mumble Rap is real Hip Hop. Relying primarily on discourse analysis, Lewis examines Mumble Rap’s congruence with oft forgotten or subjugated Hip Hop cornerstones like illegibility, melody, the DJ, and the subgenre, as well as the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics that are congruent with real Hip Hop. She also takes a critical approach to examining the Mumble Rap sound, arguing it is much more complicated than it’s often characterized, especially concerning flow and production. To explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap, Lewis situates the subgenre as southern and examines the ways it challenges dominant notions about real Hip Hop masculinity vis-à-vis attention to the mental and emotional, drug use and addiction, and the fallacies of gender and sexuality norms. Last, but not least, she argues Hip Hop will never die.

She is currently working on a documentary about her experiences coming of age in northeast Ohio during the crack cocaine epidemic with Lindumuzi Jabu Ndlovu.

Last, but certainly not least, Lewis is a proud native of Alliance, OH. She currently resides in Colorado Springs with her husband of more than two decades, Tony; their children Junior and Chase; their dog Philly; and their cat D’Brickashaw “Brick” Ferguson.