Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting is the author of “Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women” (April 2007), a provocative exploration of the collision of hip hop and feminism.

A feminist writer and researcher, she was named a rising star among black public intellectuals by Michael Eric Dyson. A graduate of Brown University , Sharpley-Whiting is Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French at Vanderbilt University where she also directs the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and serves as Director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. She lectures widely in the U.S. , Europe and Africa . The author of four books, she also co-edited three volumes, including The Black Feminist Reader (2000).