Aimee's Bio
Aimee Meredith Cox is a cultural anthropologist and tenured professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan where she also held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for the Education of Women. Her first book is Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (Duke University Press, 2015). She is on the editorial board of The Feminist Wire and on the founding editorial board of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Aimee is also an executive board member of the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA) and former co-editor of Transforming Anthropology, the peer-reviewed journal of the ABA. In addition, she trained on scholarship with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and toured extensively as a professional dancer with the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble/Ailey II. Aimee was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and 2013-2014 Visiting Professor in New York University’s Anthropology Department.
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Her first book, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship, is an ethnography based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in a homeless shelter for young women in Detroit, Michigan. Bodies of research and mainstream conversations on race, racism, family structures, economic inequality, youth culture, gender, and sexual identity have failed to adequately situate the life worlds of Black girls. The young women at the heart of Shapeshifters fill this void in our understanding of how these interlocking factors determine, but do not wholly constrain, what it can mean to be a young Black woman in the 21st Century. Shapeshifters will be available in the late spring of 2015 on Duke University Press.
Upcoming WOrk
Aimee’s latest research and creative projects unite her interest and expertise in dance and cultural anthropology.
Consulting:
Black Girl: Linguistic Play with Bessie award-winning choreographer Camille Brown.
Research:
The ethnographic legacy of anthropology and dance pioneer, Katherine Dunham
The connection between embodied healing practices and community transformations in New York City.
Community:
Founder of arts activist organization BlackLigh operating in MI, NY & NJ
Creator of Stott Pilates/modern dance yoga curriculm taught at Sacred Studio in Brooklyn, NY
