Ali Colleen Neff, Ph.D.

Virginia Tech, 510 McBryde Hall, 225 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 (919) 308-1072
mail@alicolleenneff.com www.alicolleenneff.com

!EDUCATION

2013 Ph.D., Cultural Studies and Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dissertation: Generation Fly to Fly: Urban Transformation, New Cosmopolitanism and the
Politics of Womens Voicing in Dakar, Senegal. Advisors: Dr. Christopher T. Nelson (coadvisor), Dr. Lawrence Grossberg.
Graduate Minor, Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Graduate Certificate, Cultural Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Graduate Certificate, African and African American Studies, Duke University.
2007 M.A., Folklore, UNC-Chapel Hill. Thesis: Let the World Listen Right: The Mississippi Delta
Hip-Hop Story. Advisor: Dr. William R. Ferris
1998 B.A., Political Science, Grinnell College. National Merit Scholar.
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
2015- Visiting Assistant Professor, Womens and Gender Studies, Africana Studies, Sociology
(Anthropology), Virginia Tech.
2015- Project Director, Digital Africa, Partnership with Virginia Tech Global Education Office and
Women and Gender in International Development Program.
2013- Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Africana Studies, American Studies, Womens
2015
and Gender Studies, The College of William and Mary.

!PUBLISHING

Monographs, Published and Solicited

2009 Let the World Listen Right: The Mississippi Delta Hip-Hop Story. University Press of
Mississippi, American Made Music Series, Oxford, MS, 2009.
Proj. A Body in Sound: Women, Voice, and Media in Dakar, Senegal. Manuscript solicited by K.
Wissoker, Duke University Press, 12/13.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
2016 Madame Liquidator: The Musical Mainstream and Feminine Flow in _Rethinking Difference
in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music: Theory and Politics of Ambiguity_ ed Gavin S. K.
Lee. Routledge.
2016 Digital, Underground: Sounding the Hidden Contours of Hip-Hop Media. The Oxford
Handbook of Hip Hop Studies, Jason Lee Oakes and Justin D. Burton, Oxford University
Press, 2016.
2015 Roots, Routes and Rhizomes: Sounding Womens Hip Hop on the Margins of Dakar,
Senegal. Journal of Popular Music Studies. V. 27.4 Dec 2015.
2015 Sounding Global Southernness, Journal of Popular Music Studies. With J Burton, V. 27.4
Dec 2015.
2015 Senegalese Hip-Hop, In J. Williams, ed., Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, Cambridge
University Press, 2015.
2014 Voicing the Domestic: Senegalese Sufi Womens Musical Practice, Feminine Interior Worlds,
and Possibilities for Ethnographic Listening. With photography, Collaborative
Anthropologies, v6: Spring 2014.
2013 The New Masters of Eloquence: Transatlantic Hip-Hop in the Global South. With
photography, Southern Cultures, 18:4 Winter 2013.

Neff CV 05-26-16

2012 Collaboration Conversation: Engaged Ethnography as Public Scholarship, Collaborative

Futures: Critical Reflections on Publicly Active Graduate Education, ed. A. Gilvin and G.
Wright, The Graduate School Press of Syracuse University, 2012.
2011 In One, All: Senegalese Women Freestyle Artists Unify the Global Ghetto in Social Text
Online, Periscope: Nov. 6, 2011.
2010 Crunkology: Teaching the Southern Hip-Hop Aesthetic, In N. Biamonte (Ed.) Pop-culture
Pedagogy in the Music Classroom: Teaching Tools from American Idol to Youtube (pp.
281-306). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010.
2010 Home of the Double-Headed Eagle: The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H.D.
Dennis and Margaret Dennis. Southern Cultures, 16:4 Winter 2010.

!Encyclopedia Entries

2014 Mississippi Hip-Hop Mississippi Encyclopedia, ed. T. Ownby, Jackson, MS: University Press
of Mississippi.
2013 Blues and Race in the American South. In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol.
23: Race, ed. C. Reagan Wilson, University of North Carolina Press.
Conference Proceedings
2016 Teaching Black Music as a Diversity Initiative and Pedagogical Intervention Co-Authored with
Craig E. Arthur and Anthony Kwame Harrison. Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy
Proceedings 2016, Virginia Tech.
2015 Leaders of the New School: Applying a Hip-Hop Studies Paradigm to the First Year
Experience Co-Authored with Craig E. Arthur and Anthony Kwame Harrison. Pp. 331-332
in Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy Proceedings 2015, Virginia Tech
Book Reviews
2016 Legions of Boom by Oliver Wang, Journal of the Society for American Music, Nov. 2016.
2016 Sounding Black Media: Africa in Stereo by Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Current Anthropology, Special
issue: Anthropology of Sound, Issue 30 VI 16: December 2016.
2016 Queerness in Heavy Metal: Metal Bent by Amber Clifford, Journal of Popular Music Studies,
V 28 Issue 3: August 2016.
2010 Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture by Marcileyna Morgan, in
Journal of American Folklore, 123:489, Summer 2010.
In Process, Under Review, Invited
2016 (proj) Generation Fly-to-Fly: African Popular Music and Feminine Mobilities. With
photography, minor revisions in process, The Drama Review.
2017 Of Bluebirds and Lines of Flight: Transcendental Lyricism in the Final Works of David Bowie
and Gilles Deleuze Deleuze & Music, Oxford University Press.
2017 Fugitive Proximities: Mobile Media Practices and the Black Lives Matter Movement. With
Sindhu Zagoren, pending research fellowship proposal 6/16.
2017 "Ethnofidelity: Affective Methods and Ethnographic Truth in the Musical Field. Invited. Special
Issue of Ethnomusicology Forum: Affect Theory, Ethomusicological Interventions.
Editorial Projects
2015 Sounding Global Southernness, Co-Editor with J Burton, Special Issue of Journal of Popular
Music Studies, with editors introduction, V. 27.4, Dec 2015.
Public Scholarship and Cultural Criticism
2016 "La Voce Delle Donne Sufi in Senegal, Frontiere News, Rome, June 2016.
2016 "Black Lives Sounding, with Sindhu Zagoren. La Mission magazine, Berlin, February 2016.
2014 Left of Black, with host Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University, April 2014.
2012 Ethnolyrical: Writings on Music, Ethnography and Culture, www.ethnolyrical.org

Neff CV 05-26-16

2011 Anglique Kidjo: A Global Voice for West African Women, UNC Performing Arts Series
Magazine, Fall 2011.
2011 UNC Center for Global Initiatives/WXYC Radio International Music, Two hour-long radio
documentaries concerning my ethnographic work with women musical practitioners in
Senegal (Producer). Available at: www.ethnolyrical.org, 5/2010, 10/2011.
2009 A&E Journalism: The San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, SPIN, Clarksdale PressRegister, etc. Freelance, 1998-2009.
2007 National Public Radio Interview, The State of Things with Frank Stasio; January 25th, 2007.
Websites Edited
2015 www.digitalundergrounds.org: global digital cultures site for projects, student work
2015 www.alicolleenneff.com: online digital portfolio
FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AND AWARDS
Media and Culture
2015 Digital Africa: Curriculum Globalization Grant, Virginia Tech, $5,000.
Major Fieldwork and Writing, Senegal
2013 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship: Dissertation writing and follow-up research,
$33,000.
2012 Center for Global Initiatives, UNC: For COMEMUS working group on media, Islam and
aesthetics, Co-director, $2,000.
2012 Peacock REACH Fellowship, dissertation research in Senegal, $30,000.
2011 National Endowment of the Humanities. Summer Scholars in Ethnomusicology and Global
Culture, $2,000.
2010 UNC International Dissertation Research Fellowship, for six months dissertation fieldwork in
Senegal, UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School, $7500.
2010 DK Wilgus Dissertation Research Fellowship for archival study of contemporary music in
Senegal, $4000.
2010 Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship, Alternate, US State Dept of State.

!Language and Cultural Research (Senegal):

2010 FLAS Area Studies and Language Fellowship, for Study of Wolof and Senegal, UNC, $6500.
For Wolof proficiency training in Dakar.
2008 FLAS Area Studies and Language Fellowship, for Study of Wolof and Senegal, UNC, $6500.
For Introductory Wolof and African Studies.
Teaching and Mentorship Awards:
2015 NAACP Outstanding Faculty Award, College of William and Mary NAACP.
2009 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, UNC Department of Communication Studies.
2008 UNC SURF Research Fellowship Graduate Mentor Award, Undergraduate Ethnography
Mentor (two mentorship awards), $1000.
Documentary and Media:
2008 Mississippi Humanities Council, documentary grant. For documentary work on Mississippi
visual artists, $2500.
2007 Mississippi Humanities Council, planning grant. For documentary work on Mississippi visual
artists, $1700.
2007 Folkstreams Young Filmmakers Award. For documentary work on Mississippi visual and
musical artists, $500.

Neff CV 05-26-16

M.A. Research, Mississippi:

2008 UNC Center for the Study of the American South Summer Research Circle Fellowship, $1500.
2008 American Folklore Society Student Fellowship, $300, Annual Meeting.
2006 UNC Center for the Study of the American South Summer Research Circle Fellowship, $1500.
Merit Awards and Teaching Fellowship:
2013 UNC-Chapel Hill Teaching Fellowships
1998 National Merit Scholarships, Grinnell College
INVITED TALKS AND RESIDENCIES
2016 Filming a Body in Sound: Women and Media in Dakar, Senegal. Arcana Arts Pesents,
Arcana, Durham, NC.
2015 Sounding the Global South: Hip-Hop in the Age of Digital Globalization. Department of
Communication and Theatre Arts, Old Dominion University.
2015 Digital Undergrounds: Emerging African Media Practices. Department of Communication
Studies, Randolph College.
2015 Railroads and the Underground: Subversive Mobilities in the Age of American Expansion.
Cross-Cultural Immersion Lecture, Keio University.
2015 The Politics of Dakarois Hip-Hop. Invited lecture, Dr. Chrie Rivers Ndaliko, Music
Department, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2015 I am a Woman Who Calls Allahs Name": Sufi Mysticism and Senegalese Popular Music.
Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin at Madison.
2014 Transatlantic Surfboard: Mami Wata and the Siren Songs of Pop. Fluidity in Black Popular
Music Colloquium, Africana Studies Program, Virginia Tech.
2014 Loco-mobilities: Trains and the American Popular Imagination. Cross-Cultural Immersion
Lecture, Keio University.
2013 Auto-mobility: A Cultural Studies Approach to the World of Black Music (with Anthony Kwame
Harrison). Visiting Artists Lecture Series, Westminster College of the Arts, Rider University.
2013 Planet of Sound: Digital Media and the Senegalese Sufi Diaspora. The College of William
and Mary, Anthropology, three-day residency.
2012 Ethnography, Womens Voicing, and Black Atlantic Futurity. Visiting Scholar, AAAS dept.,
Virginia Tech, April 2012, three-day residency.
2012 Lees Waxul (Things that cannot be said): Senegalese Womens Musical Voice. Visiting
Scholar, The College of William and Mary, Music Dept, three-day residency
2011 New Blues: Emerging Womens Poetics in Mississippi and Senegal. Poetics Conference,
joint UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University.
2006 Let the World Listen Right. Delta Hip-Hop Conference. Delta State University.
2006 Perspectives on Mississippi Culture. Willamette College, five-day residency.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
2013 Lees Waxul: I Say Things that Cannot be Said. Gender and Womens Studies Symposium,
Rider University, Princeton, NJ, 2013.

!CONFERENCE ACTIVITY/PARTICIPATION

Panels Organized
2016 "Islam and Sound: Devotion, Media, Embodiment. With Peter McMurray. Panel, Society for
Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2016 Rogue Methodologies, Reconfigured: Collaborative Anthropology in the Contemporary
Academy. With Bob White. Panel, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting,
Minneapolis, MN.

Neff CV 05-26-16

2016 Sound of Myself: Voicing the Uncontainable Feminine. Panel, EMP Pop Music Studies
Conference, Seattle.
2015 Sound Methodologies: Media, Affect, and Empiricism in the Musical Field. Round table
(organizer), American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
2015 Sounding the Crisis, Sounding Possibility: Critical Dialogues in Popular Music Studies (A
Round Table on the Work of Stuart Hall). Organizer and Chair, IASPM-US Annual
Meeting, Louisville, KY.
2015 Emerging Scholars: Undergraduate Work in Popular Music Studies. Organizer and Chair,
IASPM-US Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY.
2014 Conflicted Fantasies: Anthropology and African Media Cultures in the Digital Age. Round
table (organizer), American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2014 The Scramble for Black Sound, Mobilizing Postcoloniality from the Global Sonic Sweatshop.
EMP Pop Music Studies Conference, Seattle.
2014 Groove Glide: Flow, Musical Bodies, and Sonic Liquidity. IASPM Annual meeting, Chapel
Hill.
Papers Presented (Peer-Reviewed)
2016 Teaching Black Music as a Diversity Initiative and Pedagogical Intervention. With Craig E.
Arthur and Anthony Kwame Harrison, Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, Virginia
Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
2016 Auditing Visibility, Visualizing the Audible: Women, Media and Presence in Dakar, Senegal.
Gender Bodies and Technology Conference, Roanoke, VA.
2016 "In Your Eyes, From Their Lives, Into Our Ears: An African Vocal Presence, EMP Pop Music
Studies Conference, Seattle.
2015 Fugitive Proximities: Mobile Media Practices and the Black Lives Matter Movement. CoAuthored with Sindhu Zagoren. Affect Theory Conference, Millersville University,
Lancaster, PA.
2015 "Mutilating Modernity: Iggy Pops Unstable Body and the Political Aesthetics of Punk. EMP
Pop Music Studies Conference, Seattle.
2015 Leaders of the New School: Applying a Hip-Hop Studies Paradigm to the First Year
Experience. With Craig E. Arthur and Anthony Kwame Harrison, Conference on Higher
Education Pedagogy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
2014 The Sounds of Sal Tlay Ka Siti: Alex Boys Africanized Covers and Mormon Racial
Dynamics, co-authored w/Jeremy Grimshaw, Society for Ethnomusicology, Pittsburgh, PA.
2014 Reverberation I. Ecomusics and Ecomusicologies 2014: Dialogues. UNC-Asheville, NC.
2014 Selfie Harm: Teenage Girls Practices of Digital Inscription. American Studies Association,
Los Angeles.
2014 Madame Liquidator: The Musical Mainstream and Feminine Flow. IASPM Conference,
Chapel Hill.
2013 Voicing the Domestic: Senegalese Sufi Womens Musical Practice, Feminine Interior Worlds,
And Possibilities for Ethnographic Listening. American Anthropological Association annual
meeting, Chicago.
2013 Reverberation I: Sound Ecology and Senegalese Sufism. Society for Ethnomusicology (talk),
Indianapolis.
2013 Reverberation I. American Musicological Society (film showing), Pittsburgh.
2013 Ego Trips and Fast Yachts: Transatlantic Hip-Hop Aesthetics. IASPM Conference, Austin, TX.
2012 Generation Fly-to-Fly: A Politics of Futurity, Postcolonial Sounding, and Womens Musical
Poetics in Contemporary Dakar, Senegal. American Anthropological Association annual
meeting, San Francisco.

Neff CV 05-26-16

2011 Bodies In Sound: The Affective Dimensions of Sufi Vocal Practice in Senegal. American
Anthropological Association annual meeting, Montreal.
2009 Get Stupid, Go Dumb!: The Bad Voice of the Bay Area Hyphy Movement. EMP Pop Music
Studies Conference, Seattle.
2009 Get Hyphy: Embodied Musicking and Cultural Studies National Communication Association
Annual Meeting.
2008 Raising the Mannish Boy: Muddy Waters in the Year of the Emmett Till Murder. Crossroads
Cultural Studies Conference. Kingston, Jamaica.
2008 Bigger, Banner, Badman: Conjuring the Trickster in the Church of Crunk. International
Association for the Study of Popular Music Conference. Iowa City, IA.
2008 Bass is the Place: Three 6 Mafia, Regional Aesthetics, and the Politics of Minstrelsy. EMP
Pop Music Studies Conference, Seattle, WA.
2008 Home of the Double-Headed Eagle American Folklore Society Meeting, Louisville, KY.
2007 Bigger, Banner, Badman: Conjuring the Trickster in the Church of Crunk. EMP Pop Music
Studies Conference. Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA.
2006 Let the World Listen Right. American Folklore Society Meeting, Milwaukee.
2006 True Blues Aint No New News: Tuning in to Folk Freestyle Hip-Hop at the Crossroads of the
Contemporary Mississippi Delta EMP Pop Music Studies Conference. Experience Music
Project, Seattle.
2006 Let the World Listen Right. Delta Blues Symposium. Arkansas State University, Jonesboro,
Arkansas.
Discussant (Peer-Reviewed and Invited)
2016 Mediums of Black Music, in Performance and Study. American Studies Association, Denver.
2016 Documentary Filmmaking as Social Science Praxis Panelist, Sociology Departmental
Colloquium, Virginia Tech.
2015 Affect Theory and New Materialisms: New Directions in Music Scholarship. Panelist, Society
for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, Austin, TX.
2015 The Future of Black Music. Panelist, Sociology Departmental Colloquium, Virginia Tech.
2012 The Question Remains: Toward a Culture-Emergent Hip-Hop Studies. Panelist, IASPM/EMP
Conference, New York.
2012 Round Table: Exile, Race and the American South. Panelist, The Loving Story, CSAS,
UNC.
2012 Global Media and/as Local Politics: Reconfigurations of the Mediatized Muslim World.
Panelist.
2012 Blood Knot/Poetic Portraits of a Revolution. Panelist, Carrboro Arts Center.
2009 New Directions in Ethnography and Music. Panelist, Duke University Ethnomusicology.
2008 Re:Birth of a Nation. Panelist, University of North Carolina English Dept. Symposium.
Campus Talks (Invited)
2016 Culture-Responsive Digital Development in the Age of Web 2.0. Department of Geography,
Virginia Tech.
2016 Documentary Filmmaking and the Public Humanities. Material Culture and Public
Humanities Program, Virginia Tech.
2016 Digitizing Empowerment: Reconfiguring Development through African Womens Media
Practices. Women and Gender in International Development Speakers Series,Virginia
Tech.
2015 Global Hip-Hop and Feminist Geographies. ASPECT Program, Virginia Tech.

Neff CV 05-26-16

2015 With Feminist Ears: An Anthropology of Womens Sound and the African Cityscape. Through
Feminist Eyes Speakers Series, The Womens Center at Virginia Tech.
2015 "A Body in Sound: Women, Voice, and Media in Dakar, Senegal, Womens and Gender
Studies Speakers Series, Virginia Tech.
2013 I am a Woman who Calls Allahs Name: The Feminine Voice of Senegalese Sufism.
Anthropology Department Speakers Series, William and Mary.
2013 Passages: Mobilizing Transatlantic Hip-Hop in the Global South. The Global South
Conference, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2012 I am a Woman who Calls Allahs Name: The Feminine Voices of Senegalese Sufism. Islam
in Global Context Speakers Series, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2009 Wooyo! (Sing!): Emergent Womens Popular Music in Urban Senegal. Communication
Studies Colloquium, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2008 Let the World Listen Right. UNC Southern Folklife Speakers Series (Invited) Wilson Library
Pleasants Room, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2008 Panelist, Perspectives in Hip-Hop Studies. African and African American Studies Program,
Duke University.
2007 On Blues Ethnography. William R. Ferris Film Festival, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2007 Material Mississippi. CSAS Southern Research Circle Colloquium, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2006 Mississippi Delta Hip-Hop. CSAS Southern Research Circle Colloquium, UNC-Chapel Hill.
2005 New Perspectives on the Dirty South. Centering the South Series, UNC-Chapel Hill.

!ACADEMIC MEDIA WORKS

Reverberation 2: Women Praise Singers of Urban Senegal Director.

2016 Documentary Filmmaking as Social Science Praxis, Virginia Tech (Rough Cut)
Reverberation 1: Women Sufi Praise Singers of Senegal Director.
2014 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Society for Visual Anthropology
2012 Jef Jel: Contemporary Senegalese Sufi Arts. June 18-23rd, Carrack Gallery, Durham,
NC
2011 Afro-Sufi Graf. LowerH8rs, San Francisco, CA.
2011 Listenings, Block 2 Gallery, Raleigh Arts Commission, Raleigh, NC. Feb. 3-March 28.
Home of the Double-Headed Eagle: Visionary Vernacular Architecture Co-Director with B.
Graves.
2010 Bruce West, Take Time to Appreciate: Photographs of Mrs. L. V. Hull and Rev. H. D.
Dennis. Lauren Rogers Museum. Laurel, MS.
2009 Spiritual Advisor to the World, Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri.
2008

Soul Business: Commerce and Community in a Durham, North Carolina Holiness

Storefront Church. (Documentary Website, 2008-12)

2007

Material Mississippi: Material Cultures of the Mississippi Delta (Documentary

Website)
Let the World Listen Right. Co-Director with B. Graves and J. Williams.
2006 UNC Screen Arts Series, Featured Film.

!
!
!

Director/Curator, Generation Fly to Fly.

2013 Women poets and singers of Senegal. 20 photos, documentary film, field recordings,
contextual materials: solo exhibit.

Neff CV 05-26-16

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Virginia Tech
Undergraduate
Sounding Transformation: Hip-Hop, Social Media, and Nonviolence

Spring 2017

Gender, Pop and Media (Women and Creativity)

Fall 2016

Digital Africa/Digital Blackness

Spring 2017

Digital Undergrounds: New Media and Emerging Subcultures

Fall 2015

Women Who Rock/Women Who Rhyme: Gender, Media and Musical Performance
Introduction to Sociology
Graduate
Teaching Race/Teaching Gender: Pedagogy and Social Inequality
Feminist Research Methods
The College of William and Mary
Undergraduate
Women, Africa, and Anthropology
Media Anthropology
Wolof Language and Culture
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning: The Sacred and the Secular in Popular Cultures
Digital Media and Popular Cultures
Introduction to American Studies: American Popular Culture
Digital Undergrounds: New Media and Emerging Subcultures (Writing Seminar)
Graduate
The Global South: Postcoloniality, The Black Atlantic, and Transnational Cultures
Guided Readings: Digital Humanities and Cultural Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Global Popular Music: UNC Carolina Courses Online
Popular Music and Cultural Critique
Media and Cultural Studies: Technologies and Representation
Public Speaking
Popular Music: Local Scenes
The Southern Hip-Hop Aesthetic
Introduction to Performance Ethnography: Oral Traditions
Introduction to Media Production Lab
Teaching Assistantships
Rhetoric of Social Controversy.Assistant to Dr. Carole Blair.
Intermediate Media Production. Assistant to Ed Rankus.
Material Culture of the US South. Assistant to Dr. Marcie Ferris.

Fall 2015
Winter 2016
Fall 2016
Spring 2016

Spring 2015
Fall 2014
Summer 2014
Spring 2015
Summer 2014
Fall 2014
Spring 2015
Spring 2014
Fall 2014
Fall 2013
Fall 2013
Spring 2014
Spring 2014
Fall 2013
Spring 2011Summer 2013
Spring 2011
Summer2011
Fall 2009
Summer 2009
Summer 2010
Spring 2009
Fall 2008
Spring 2008
Fall 2007
Spring 2008
Fall 2007
Spring 2007

Neff CV 05-26-16

Southern Literature. Assistant to Dr. William Ferris.

Southern Music. Assistant to Dr. William Ferris.
Duke University
The Hip-Hop Aesthetic. Assistant to Dr. Mark Anthony Neal

Spring 2006
Fall 2005
Spring 2007

RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS
2008 Co-Director, ScreenArts, UNC-Chapel Hill. Co-director.
2007 Graduate Research Consultant: African American Travels,Consultant to Dr. K Janken.
2006 Research Assistant: American Studies. Assistant to Dr. Robert Cantwell.
2006 Research Assistant: Folklore. Assistent to Dr. Patricia Sawin.
2006 Research Assistant: History. Assistant to Dr. William Ferris.

!SERVICE AND RELATED EXPERIENCE

Service to Profession
2016 Officer, Nominations Committee, IASPM-US.
2015 Program Chair: International Association of Popular Music Studies annual meeting,
Louisville, KY.
2014 Faculty Sponsor: Graduate Student Digital Humanities Working Group, College of William
and Mary.
2014 Programming Committee: EMP Popular Music Studies Conference, Seattle, WA, 2013-14.
2014 Programming Committee: International Association for the Study of Popular Music 2014,
Chapel Hill, NC, 2013-14.
2011 Event Committee: American Anthropological Association Sound and Music Interest Group,
San Francisco, 2011-12.
2014 Article reviewer, Cultural Anthropology, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Poetics Journal ,
Sound Studies, and Southern Cultures Journal, 2006-Present.

!SERVICE TO DEPARTMENTS

2016 Programming Committee: Gender, Bodies, and Technology Biannual Conference,

Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Virginia Tech.
2015 Visibility Committee, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Virginia Tech.
2012 Project Coordinator, Commemus Reading Group on Islam, Aesthetics and Media, Center for
Global Initiatives, Department of Communication Studies, UNC.
2012 Pedagogy Chair, Communication Studies Graduate Student Government, UNC.
SERVICE TO COMMUNITY
2015- Faculty Advisor, Echoing Fembee Roars, Feminist Music Collective/Zine, Blacksburg, VA
2009 Teacher, English Language/American Culture, Gaston Berger, Guediawaye, Senegal
2007 Volunteer, Internationalist Bookstore. Chapel Hill, NC
2006 Volunteer, Music Maker Relief Foundation. Hillsborough, NC
2004 Volunteer, Delta Center for Culture and Learning, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS
2003 Volunteer Creative Writing Tutor, 826 Valencia. San Francisco, CA

!LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Wolof (Senegalese lingua franca), fluent speaking and reading proficiency; French, reading proficiency,
working speaking; Spanish, reading proficiency; English (native).

!MUSICAL, ARTISTIC, AND MULTIMEDIA PRACTICE

Full musical notation reading proficiency, Piano (classical, intermediate), guitar/electric guitar
(intermediate), pedal steel guitar (beginner), Percussion: Javanese gamelan, Djembe, Sabar, Xiin
(intermediate), Professional vinyl turntablism. Familiar with music production values and software.

!DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING AND PRODUCTION

Neff CV 05-26-16

FinalCutPro, GarageBand, Audacity, Professional photography available for viewing at

www.ethnolyrical.org. Design: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Photoshop.

!WORKING GROUPS AND COLLABORATIONS

UNC Media Studies and Islam Working Group (co-founder, 2011-13.); UNC Global South Working
Group (Invited,2007-13); UNC-Duke Paul Gilroy Working Group (2007-08); Cultures of Memory
Working Group (2007-08); UNC Southern Research Circle (2005-10); (Re)Thinking the Popular
(Invited, Stuart Hall Reading Group, 2007-09).

!PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Anthropological Association; Association for Cultural Studies; American Studies Association,
International Association for the Study of Popular Music; American Folklore Society; National
Communication Association; Society for Ethnomusicology.

!CONSULTING

2016 NEH Digital Projects for the Public Discovery: The Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival, 1958
To 1970 To Now. Humanities Consultant.
2016 Global Media and Copyright Consultant, Ethnography, NextLevel Hip-Hop Diplomacy.
2016 Qualitative Research Consultant, Tuning in to Kids, Emotion Socialization, Departments of
Psychology and Linguistics, Virginia Tech.
RELATED EXPERIENCE
Reporter, Clarksdale Press-Register. Clarksdale, MS, 2004-5.
Freelance Writer, various publications, including The San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, East
Bay Express, Oxford American, Concussion Skate Magazine, SFBG.com, Noise Pop, Clarksdale
Press Register, 1998-present.
Intern, A&E department, San Francisco Bay Guardian. San Francisco, CA, 2001.
Assistant Labor Organizer, Union Summer Program: AFL-CIO Riverboat Casino campaign; Justice for
Janitors SEIU campaign; ACORN Fair Wage campaign. St. Louis, MO, 1996.
Volunteer Independent Radio DJ: KDIC (Grinnell, IA) and KUSF, San Francisco, CA, 1994-2002.

!PRESS COVERAGE, RESEARCH AND TEACHING

2015 New African Language Course Offers Students a Global Perspective. By Sydney MaHan.
William and Mary News&Media, March 6, 2015. https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2015/
new-african-language-course-offers-students-a-global-perspective123.php
2015 Neff Garners NAACP Outstanding Faculty Award. By Staff. William and Mary
News&Media. April 24, 2015. https://www.wm.edu/as/anthropology/news/neff-garnersnaacp-outstanding-faculty-award.php
2013 Culture and Gender Collide in Colloquium. By Megan Pendagast. The Rider News, 04 Apr
2013. http://www.theridernews.com/2013/04/04/culture-and-gender-collide-in-colloquium/
2012 The rap thesis that forever linked a Chapel Hill Academic to Senegal. By Ashley Melzer.
The Independent Weekly, November 7th, 2012. http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/therap-thesis-that-forever-linked-a-chapel-hill-academic-to-senegal/Content?oid=3186460
2012 A Soul Cry: Ali Neff Goes Where Culture and Music Collide. By Mark Derewicz. Endeavors
Magazine, May 30, 2012. http://endeavors.unc.edu/
ali_neff_an_ethnographer_no_longer_at_a_crossroads
2009 Professor Brings Music into Class. By Staff. The Daily Tarheel, 12/31/09. http://
dth.thesn.net/article/2009/03/professor_brings_music_into_classbr_
2007 Hip-hop at the Crossroads. By Mark Derewicz, Endeavors Magazine, Monday, January 1,
2007. http://endeavors.unc.edu/win2007/clarksdale.php

!REFERENCES
Neff CV 05-26-16

10

Christopher T. Nelson
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
301 Alumni Building CB#
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3115
(919) 619-9105
ctnelson@email.unc.edu

African and African American Studies

Duke University
243 Ernestine Friedl Bldg., Rm. F
Campus Box 90252
Phone: (919) 684-3987
dr-yogi@att.net

!Louise Meintjes

Department of Anthropology
Duke University
072 Mary Duke Biddle/210 Friedl
Durham, NC 27708
(919) 660-3339/681 3263
meintjes@duke.edu

!James Peacock

Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
301 Alumni Building CB#
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3115
Phone: (919) 966-4106
peacock@unc.edu

!Lawrence Grossberg

Department of Communication Studies

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
209 Bingham Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3285
Phone: (919) 962-3305
docrock@email.unc.edu

!William R. Ferris

Department of American Studies

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Center for Study of the American South
CB # 9127, 410 East Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
(919) 962-0519
wferris@unc.edu

!Brad L. Weiss

Department of Anthropology
The College of William and Mary
Washington Hall 116,
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Phone: 757-221-1209
blweis@wm.edu

!Wahneema Lubiano

African and African American Studies

Duke University
243 Ernestine Friedl Bldg., Rm. G
Campus Box 90252
Phone: (919) 681-2843
wah@duke.edu
Mark Anthony Neal
Neff CV 05-26-16

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