James Peterson

James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He has been Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, a visiting lecturer and preceptor in African American Studies at Princeton University, and the Media Coordinator for the Harvard University Hip Hop Archive. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of hip-hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban, and youth cultures.

Dr. Peterson has done strategic consulting for a variety of ad agencies and/or consumer product corporations including Hill Holiday, J. Walter Thompson (JWT), TracyLocke, Pepsico/Brisk, and Diageo/Smirnoff. He has written numerous scholarly articles on hip-hop culture, multiculturalism, African American literature, culture, and linguistics, as well as urban studies. He has conducted interviews with Gil Scott Heron, Dr. Manning Marable, Sistah Souljah, Snoop Dogg, Dead Prez, and DJ Jazzy Jeff, and generally applies his journalistic skills and his ethnographic training toward innovative academic inquiry.

Dr. Peterson has been featured on BET and BET.com, "The Michael Eric Dyson Show," Hot 97's "Street Soldiers," "The Michael Baisden Show," and the award-winning PBS documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, CBS News, MSNBC, ABC News, ESPN, HLN, and various local television networks as an expert on popular culture, urban youth, and politics. Peterson blogs for the Huffington Post and has published his scholarly work in Callaloo, Criticism, Black Arts Quarterly, XXL, and African American Review. Essays and other public sphere writing have appeared on TheRoot.com and SLAM online. Peterson is currently working on his first academic book, Major Figures: Critical Essays on Hip Hop Music (Mississippi University Press). He has also been featured and/or quoted in Vibe Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, The Miami Herald, Southern Voices, and The Wall Street Journal.