Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
African Studies
Howard University
2006
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Faculty
Faculty
Msia Kibona Clark, Ph.D.
Professor
Department/Office
- African Studies
School/College
- College of Arts & Sciences
- Graduate School
Additional Positions
-
ProfessorInterdisciplinary Studies
Biography
SCHOLARSHIP · CULTURE · COMMUNITY
Msia Kibona Clark, Ph.D.
Professor of African Cultural and Feminist Studies
Director, Hip-Hop Studies Minor · Howard University
Music. Movement. Meaning.
From the verses of African hip-hop artists to the digital spaces where women organize, Dr. Msia Kibona Clark studies how culture becomes a language for belonging, resistance, and self-definition. A Professor in Howard University's Department of African Studies, she brings Pan-Africanist and African feminist perspectives to questions of race, gender, sexuality, migration, and power.
Her work moves among books, classrooms, artist conversations, and public platforms. Across these settings, she asks how people of African descent represent their lives, challenge the stories told about them, and create connections across borders.
A career in connection
4 books authored or co-edited
Digital publishing since 2011
Podcasting since 2016
Inaugural director of Howard's Hip-Hop Studies Minor
I. Listening to Africa, Writing Across the Diaspora
Clark's scholarship examines hip-hop as a site of political expression, feminist critique, and the negotiation of identity. She is the author of Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers (2018). Her co-edited books include Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati (2014), Pan African Spaces: Essays on Black Transnationalism (2018), and African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora (2023).
Her current book project examines how Millennial and Gen Z hip-hop artists in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States navigate race, gender, and identity. Her editorial work also creates opportunities for collaborative scholarship: the 2024 special issue Vernacular Verses: Language, Identity and African Hip-Hop brought artists and doctoral students together to explore the politics of language.
II. Scholarship on the Mic
Through The Hip Hop African, Clark brings research into conversation with the people making the music. She edits the blog and produces and hosts the podcast, connecting artist interviews, cultural analysis, and student writing. These platforms support public engagement with African hip-hop while giving students opportunities to contribute to a wider scholarly and cultural conversation.
Her public scholarship includes contributions to the exhibition publication The Culture: Hip-Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century and media appearances with PBS, NHK, the Associated Press, and BBC. She is also a photographer whose work has appeared in exhibitions in Tanzania and the United States.
III. Building Hip-Hop Studies at Howard
Clark helped develop Howard University's interdisciplinary Hip-Hop Studies Minor, approved in 2024, and serves as its inaugural director. As a co-organizer of the university's annual Hip-Hop Studies Conference, she helps convene scholars, students, practitioners, and community members around the study and practice of hip-hop.
Her institutional leadership also includes service as Undergraduate Director and Director of Graduate Studies in African Studies. Through curriculum development, programming, and mentorship, she creates opportunities for students to participate in the intellectual life of the university and the broader field.
IV. The Classroom as a Place of Cultural Production
In courses on hip-hop and social change in Africa and Black women and popular culture, Clark connects critical inquiry with creative practice. Students analyze cultural representations, produce podcasts, publish research, and engage with artists. Workshops, festival participation, and international learning experiences extend these conversations beyond the classroom.
Her mentorship includes doctoral advising, collaborative publishing, fieldwork, and support for students presenting their research. Through CODESRIA's College of Mentors, she has also advised doctoral scholars at universities across Africa.
V. A Transnational Intellectual Journey
Clark earned her doctorate in African Studies at Howard University, her master's degree at American University, and her bachelor's degree at Johnson C. Smith University. Before joining Howard, she taught in the Department of Pan African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. As a Fulbright Scholar in 2013–2014, she worked in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Across research, teaching, and creative work, she sustains a commitment to African cultural expression and to the people whose knowledge gives it meaning.
Explore her scholarship and creative work · Visit The Hip Hop African
Education & Expertise
Education
Master of Arts (M.A.)
International Relations and Comparative & Regional Studies: Africa
American University
2001
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
Political science
Johnson C. Smith University
1998
Expertise
The Hip Hop African Podcast (2016 - )
The podcast is produced & hosted by Msia Kibona Clark and features discussions on African hip-hop music & culture. The podcast features interviews and discussions with artists from all over the continent and the Diaspora. The podcast is unique in its format and values in-depth discussions with people actively involved in hip-hop culture in Africa and the African Diaspora.
The show has hosted diverse artists, activists, and scholars on topics ranging from language, religion, gender, activism, and politics. The podcast is available on hiphopafrican.com, as well as iTunes, Spotify, GooglePlay, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, and most podcast platforms.
Academics
Academics
Hip Hop and Popular Culture in Africa
This course examines the development of hip hop culture throughout Africa. The course focuses on the role hip hop culture as a method of social commentary and resistance. The course also highlights the role of hip hop artists and culture in social and political changes occurring across the continent in the past 25 years.The course first examines the rise of hip hop in Africa. The course then focuses on the use of hip hop culture’s commentary on democracy, corruption, social institutions, and gender. The course also examines the ways in which hip hop culture has engaged youth, social institutions, and the state. The course finally focuses on case studies of hip hop communities in order to show the diversities found across Africa. The case studies look at hip hop and social participation within individual hip hop communities in Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania.The course is taught each spring semester
Black Women & Popular Culture
This course is an examination of the representations of Black (African and African American) women that have dominated popular culture. The course looks at the history of those representations, especially in systems of colonialism and enslavement. These representations have fed tropes about Black women, tropes that have reinforced patriarchal structures, silence around violence against Black women, and domestic policies that negatively impact Black women’s lives. The course also looks at how Black women are creating content to challenge those familiar tropes. The course considers how women create their own representations, which create spaces within patriarchal environments for women to exercise their agency and create counter narratives.
Research
Research
Funding
2020-2023 Participant in African/Black Diaspora Studies Research Seminar. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
2019 Hip Hop in Africa Online Short Course. Center for African Studies, Howard University. $10,000
2017 Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, Howard University. $15,000
2016 Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, Howard University. $10,000
2016 Academic Faculty Enhancement & Enrichment Program. Center for African Studies, Howard University. $5,000
2013-14 Fulbright Scholar – Department of Fine and Performing Art, University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
Outstanding Service. College of Arts & Sciences, Howard University, 2023
Outstanding Service. College of Arts & Sciences, Howard University, 2021
Outstanding Community Service. The Association of Tanzanian Community (ATC), 2019
Outstanding Service. College of Arts & Sciences, Howard University, 2017
Featured News
Featured News
Watch: PBS | Great Migrations: A People on the Move — Episode 4 — "Coming to America"
Read: Associated Press | Hip-Hop at 50: Women battle misogyny to send hip-hop spinning in a new direction
Publications and Presentations
Publications and Presentations
African Women in Digital Spaces
African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora; Edited by Msia Kibona Clark and Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed
From Tamale to Paris, Hong Kong to Texas and back to Ouagadougou, this collection of scholarly chapters, poetry and personal essays theorizes the lives of African women and people of marginalized genders on the continent and the diaspora. The book is an important intervention in conversations on social movements and their convergence with digital media and other praxis tools. The contributors bring a refreshing perspective to discourses on African feminists' agency and how this manifests in their organizing in the physical world and in the digital public sphere. The volume demonstrates the relationships between the struggles of African feminists on the continent and the diaspora charting pathways for African scholars to build coalitions and work toward collective liberation.
Hip-Hop in Africa
Hip Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers. Ohio University Press.
Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa’s biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities.
Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the spread of hip-hop culture in Africa following its emergence in the United States, assessing the impact of urbanization and demographics on the spread of hip-hop culture.
Studies of Gender and Popular Music in Africa
Studies of Gender and Popular Music in Africa
This chapter examines post-2000 scholarship on gendered representations in African popular music from scholars based both in Africa and in the West. The authors explore the historical and geographical development of contemporary scholarship on the topic, and the voices and scholarly spaces that have often been centered. Numerous studies approach gender and popular music from interdisciplinary fields, such as African studies, women’s studies, and cultural studies. Methods often employed in these studies include textual analysis of song lyrics, and, predominantly, ethnographies to understand performers, performance spaces, and audiences. The authors also discuss the power dynamics of researchers and their interactions with the local African communities they work with. In addition, the authors focus on questions of access and inclusion of African based scholars and institutes.
Hip hop and Pan Africanism: from Blitz the Ambassador to Beyoncé
Hip hop and Pan Africanism: from Blitz the Ambassador to Beyoncé
Hip hop is many things. Most recently is has become more of commodity, a commercial venture, but it has always been and remains a global culture that represents local realities. It speaks about where one is from – through rap lyrics, DJing, graffiti or breakdancing – by incorporating local slang, references, neighbourhood tales, sounds and styles...
Feminisms in African hip hop
Feminisms in African hip hop in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 17 (2), 383-400.
Women hip hop artists in Africa have created spaces for themselves within hip hop’s (hyper)masculine culture. They have created these spaces in order to craft their own narratives around gender and sexuality and to challenge existing narratives. This research uses African feminism as a broad lens through which to examine how these women artists present challenges to patriarchy, gender norms, and the politics of respectability that may or may not align with African feminist ideologies. In addition to resistance, this research examines how these artists use their art to construct their own dynamic and multidimensional representations in ways that find parallels within African feminisms. In this study, more than three hundred songs produced by women hip hop artists were surveyed. The study revealed diverse expressions of feminist identities, implicit and explicit rejections of patriarchy, and expressions of sexuality that included agency and nonconformity.
