A multi-methods scholar, Noliwe Rooks is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor in Africana Studies at Brown University and the chair of Africana Studies. Her award-winning scholarship explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States.
The author of six books and numerous articles, essays, and op-ed’s, Rooks received an NAACP Image Award nomination for A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune, and an award for nonfiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation for Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. She has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson School among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a regular contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine and NPR.
Her most recent book is Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children (Pantheon, 2025)
