Marcy Morgan

Archive Director

Marcyliena Morgan is Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Executive Director of the Hiphop Archive . Professor Morgan earned both her B.A. and her M.A. degrees at the University of Illinois in Chicago . She obtained an additional M.A. at the University of Essex, England and her PhD through the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania . Her research interests include: 1) Urban speech communities: identity, migration, interaction, language use, discourse styles, urban youth language, verbal performance, hip-hop culture; 2) The African Diaspora: continuity and innovation in language and communication styles of peoples of African descent residing in the Americas and throughout the African Diaspora; 3) language, culture and identity: how language both constitutes and works in the construction of gender, national and other group identities, especially in urban areas; 4) Discourse strategies: intentionality and responsibility in discourse; construction of gender in discourse and narrative style and; language socialization; 5) verbal performance: in urban African Diaspora speech communities with special emphasis on African American toasts, signifying and hiphop; 6) hiphop language and culture; 7) language and education: language policy and planning regarding social class varieties and African American English in the US , literacy instruction, language education policy and programs for bilingual creole language speakers. Marcyliena Morgan has conducted field research on the African Diaspora, identity and language in the USA , England and the Caribbean . She has received major grants from the Ford Foundation, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She is the author of many publications that focus on youth, gender, language, culture, identity, sociolinguistics, discourse and interaction, including Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and the forthcoming bookThe Real Hiphop - Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground (Duke University Press, 2008). Professor Morgan founded the Hiphop Archiveat the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard Universityin 2002. Professor Morgan teaches classeson hip hop, the ethnography of communications, representation in the media, language and identity, race, class and gender.