Heidi R. Lewis
Heidi R. Lewis
Dr. Heidi Renée Lewis is President of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), David & Lucile Packard Professor and Associate Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College. Her areas of specialization are Feminist Theory and Politics with an emphasis in Black Feminism, Hip Hop Discourse, specifically Rap, and Critical Media Studies.
Personal Life
Lewis was born to Robin R. Stewart and Jerome L. Freeman in Alliance, Ohio in 1981, during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. Her father was an addict for most of her childhood, and much of her scholarship has stemmed from this experience. Under the supervision of Drs. Venetria K. Patton, Bill V. Mullen, P. Ryan Schneider, and Crystal S. Anderson, she wrote a dissertation entitled “‘She still missed her daddy sometimes’: Black Women's Post-Civil Rights Father-Daughter Narratives.” She’s also working on a documentary about these experiences with Lindumuzi Jabu Ndlovu, one of her former Colorado College students. She currently resides in Colorado Springs, CO, with her husband Antonio, with whom she celebrated 20 years in 2023; their two children, Antonio, Jr. and Chase; their dog Philly; and their cat D’Brickashaw Ferguson (aka Brick).
Early Career
After graduating from Alliance High School in 1999, Lewis earned a B.A. in English Studies from Robert Morris University in 2003., There, she was encouraged to pursue a Ph.D. by the late Dr. Rex Crawley and Dr. Connie Ruzich. During the pursuit of her M.A. in English Literature at Ohio University (2005), she was mentored by Dr. Crystal S. Anderson, who encouraged her to attend Purdue University for her Ph.D. in American Studies (2011). an M.A. in English Literature from Ohio University in 2005, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University in 2011. Her dissertation, “She still missed her daddy sometimes': Black Women's Post-Civil Rights Father-Daughter Narratives,” was supervised by Drs. Venetria K. Patton (chair), Bill V. Mullen, P. Ryan Schneider, and Crystal S. Anderson (outside reader). While pursuing her doctorate, she also earned a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Purdue (2008) and another in Online Teaching & Learning from Ivy Tech Community College (2008).
National Women's Studies
Lewis has been an active member of NWSA since she was selected to participate in the Women of Color Leadership Project in 2008. In addition to serving as a regular conference proposal reviewer and graduate student mentor, she routinely attended the Chairs and Directors meeting and was selected to attend the first Curriculum Institute. Her journey to leadership within the Association started with her founding the Feminist Media Studies Interest Group in 2015. Subsequently, she was elected Secretary in 2021 and served as a Women of Color Leadership Project Co-Chair in 2023. Most recently, she was elected to serve as the Association’s 22nd President.
Early in her presidency, Lewis released a strategic plan that aims to “galvanize a recommitment to the multivocal and multidirectional intellectual traditions central to our field in thoughtful, transparent, and trustworthy ways.” She will also lead the Association through two of its annual conferences, Detroit (2024) and Puerto Rico (2025). As content leader, she selected the following themes, “The Journey not only the Arrival, Critical Connections not only Critical Mass: (Re)thinking Feminist Movements,” which honors Grace Lee Boggs; and “An Honour Song: Feminist Struggles, Feminist Victories,” which uplifts indigenous theorizing and postcolonial critique and honors Kiera L. Ladner and Leanne Simpson’s This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades (2010).
Colorado College
In 2010, Lewis earned a dissertation fellowship in Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College through the Consortium for Faculty Diversity. After serving as Visiting Assistant Professor the following year, she entered the tenure-track and then earned tenure in 2018 during the 2017-18 AY. She served as Director of Feminist & Gender Studies department chair from 2016-22 AY, including terms as Interim and Associate Director. She regularly teaches Introduction to Feminist & Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Critical Media Studies, Black Feminist Theory, Hip Hop and Feminism, and the department’s first study abroad course, Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlin.
As Director, Lewis spearheaded several initiatives, including the acquisition of three additional tenure-track lines, an Artist-in-Residence position, 12 student office assistant positions, and funding for the three Iota Iota Iota (Triota) officers to attend the NWSA annual conference at no cost. She also secured funding from the College’s Career Center for students to intern with The Feminist Wire and NWSA, along with funds to compensate the student newsletter’s Editor and to create two compensated student Content Creator positions. Her efforts led to the largest donation in the program’s history, and the recruitment and retention of the most racially diverse and largest number of faculty and students in the department’s history.
Lewis has also held other administrative and governance-related roles at the College, including terms on the Social Sciences Executive Committee, the Academic Advisory Council to the acting Co-Presidents, and the Faculty Executive Committee. She also served as Inaugural Chair of the Community Safety Accountability Committee and Inaugural Coordinator for Early Career Faculty Development Programs. In the latter role, Lewis directed two programs supporting over 50 contingent, tenure-track, and tenured faculty, the Riley Scholars-in-Residence Program (RSiRP) and the Mentoring Alliance Program (MAP) she co-created with Dr. Peony Fhagen. RSiRP offers one-year fellowships to predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars hired through the Consortium, providing them with opportunities to complete their dissertation or cultivate their postdoctoral research and enter the academic job market while gaining meaningful experience teaching in the liberal arts and providing participating departments and programs with opportunities to develop or enhance their mentoring skills and diversify their faculty. Similarly, MAP was created to facilitate a college-wide shift regarding early career faculty development from a hierarchical, disempowering approach to one that recognizes the skills and talents of early career faculty and to support tenured faculty committed to developing their capacity for robust, intentional mentoring.
Scholarship
Lewis is currently working on a single-authored manuscript entitled, “Make Rappers Rap Again!: Interrogating the Mumble Rap ‘Crisis’” (under contract with Oxford University Press). In it, she interrogates the ways Mumble Rap has been subjugated within “real” Hip Hop (or the most authentic), sometimes even expelled altogether and situated as the catalyst for its demise. Critics claim mumble rappers are ignorant about Hip Hop history, disrespectful toward “old heads” (or Hip Hop elders), too similar, unskilled, prone to rapping about nonsense, and too feminine (e.g., wearing nail polish and rapping about depression). Contrarily and controversially, Lewis argues Mumble Rap is, in fact, real Hip Hop. First, it has galvanized the genre for over a decade. Also, like many rappers before them, mumble rappers are rebellious. However, intracommunal tension and rebellion are Hip Hop mainstays. So, Lewis problematizes real Hip Hop norms for engaging with its origins and old heads by recovering longstanding debates about what Hip Hop has been, is, and should be. She then demonstrates the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics congruent with real Hip Hop, and she situates Mumble Rap as conversant with other, oft-ignored, Hip Hop cornerstones like illegibility, the DJ, and the subgenre. She also takes a comprehensive approach to examining the Mumble Rap sound, paying special attention to flow and production. To explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap and to take a more complicated approach to examining the subgenre, Lewis makes two other, critical moves. First, she geographically situates Mumble Rap as southern, then she examines how Mumble Rap challenges dominant narratives about Hip Hop masculinity. Subsequently, she conducts an interview with DJ Drama, then briefly concludes by commenting on the state of women in Hip Hop and the state of Hip Hop Studies.
Her first book, In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (edition assemblage, 2021), co-edited with Dana Asbury and Jazlyn Andrews, is the 7th edition of Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winner Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Witnessed Series, an English-language book series featuring Black writers who have lived in Germany, and is indebted to the relationships Lewis built and the worlds she co-imagined and created teaching her study abroad course. In Audre’s Footsteps honors Black intellectual traditions set forth by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Angela Y. Davis, and Audre Lorde, all who were influenced by their experiences in Berlin. Engaging Black and Transnational feminist frameworks, it amplifies the resistive and generative experiences of Black and women of color intellectuals in Berlin and the U.S., examining how they resist and revise oppressive narratives and how they address the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity. Of note, In Audre’s Footsteps features a “Foreword” co-authored by Jasmin Eding and Judy Gummich, co-founders of ADEFRA: Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland, the first grassroots activist organization for Black German women; Ria Cheatom, a dear friend of Audre Lorde’s, member of ADEFRA, and co-author of Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984 to 1992, and Ika Hügel-Marshall, also a dear friend of Audre’s, member of ADEFRA, co-author of The Berlin Years, and author of Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, the first single-authored book by a Black person in Germany. The book is also unique and particularly accessible for a wide range of audiences in that it features 7 chapters transcribed from actual conversations with Generation Adefra leaders Katja Kinder (also a co-founder), Peggy Piesche, and Prof. Dr. Maisha Auma; Iris Rajanayagam; Josephine Apraku; Dr. Rebecca Brückmann; Jamile da Silva e Silva e Silva and Melody Bettencourt; Mona El Omari; and Dr. Céline Barry; and a love letter to Katharina Oguntoye, founding member of ADEFRA and dear friend of Audre’s, as the “Afterword.” Also of note is Lewis’s collaborations with former #FemGeniusesinBerlin, the nickname students enrolled in her study abroad course, including Andrews, Mae Eskenazi (audiovisual engineer), and Jade Frost (copyeditor).
More recently, Lewis had published an article on “Expertise.” in the second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, edited by Catherine M. Orr and Ann M. Braithwaite, as well as “If We Bury the Ratchet, We Risk Burying Black Women: A New Directions Analysis of Married to Medicine” in Layli Maparyan’s Womanism Rising. She has also published in Julius Dion Bailey’s The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, Unteilbar: Bündnisse gegen Rassismus, and other publications; and contributed to NewBlackMan, NPR, Ms., Bitch, and Act Out, along with giving talks at Vanderbilt, the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, the University of Georgia, the Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt, and other organizations in the U.S., Canada, and Berlin.
References
https://www.nwsa.org/page/StrategicPlan
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/basics/contact/directory/people/lewis_heidi-r.html