Regina Bradley

Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies — Kennesaw State University

Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an alumna Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow (Harvard University, Spring 2016) and an Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, GA. Her expertise and research interests include post-Civil Rights African American literature, hip hop culture, race and the contemporary U.S. South, and sound studies. Dr. Bradley earned a B.A. in English from Albany State University (GA), an M.A. in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in African American Literature from Florida State University.

Dr. Bradley's current book-length project, Chronicling Stankonia: OutKast and the Rise of the Hip Hop South (under contract, UNC Press), explores how Atlanta, GA hip hop duo OutKast influences conversations about the Black American South after the Civil Rights Movement. Chronicling Stankonia stems from her critically acclaimed series OutKasted Conversations, a YouTube dialogue series about the impact of OutKast on popular culture. She is also the editor of a forthcoming collection of essays about OutKast for the University of Georgia Press. Dr. Bradley’s work on popular culture and race is published in south: an interdisciplinary journal, Meridians, Comedy Studies, ADA, Journal of Ethnic American Literature, Palimpsest, and Current Musicology.

Dr. Bradley's public scholarship is featured on a range of news media outlets including Washington Post, NPR, NewsOne, SoundingOut!, and Creative Loafing Atlanta. In May 2017, Dr. Bradley delivered a TEDx talk, "The Mountaintop Ain't Flat," about the significance of hip hop in bridging the American Black South to the present and future. In May 2019, Dr. Bradley, along with music and culture journalist Christina Lee, started hosting the southern hip hop podcast Bottom of the Map for WABE (NPR Atlanta) and PRX. Bottom of the Map boasts being featured as “New and Noteworthy” on Apple Podcast and “What’s Trending?” on Spotify.

As a complement to her scholarship, Dr. Bradley is also an acclaimed fiction writer. Her first short story collection, Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South, was published by Peter Lang press in 2017. Jesmyn Ward described the stories in Boondock Kollage as leaving her “breathless and incoherent.” Dr. Bradley’s short story “Beautiful Ones” was a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee in short fiction. Her other stories have been featured in Obsidian, Transition, and Oxford American. Dr. Bradley’s fiction has been supported by the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the Tin House Summer Workshop. She is currently working on her first novel based on the short story “Beautiful Ones,” The Ghosts Come Home, about the disappearance of a teenaged black boy in Southwest Georgia.

Dr. Bradley can be reached via Twitter (@redclayscholar) or through her website, www.redclayscholar.com.