Pre-Ph.D.
CASA Pre-Ph.D. Faculty Associate, Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey, currently teaches classes on American government, Black women and politics, Black political behavior, Black politics, Hip-Hop and politics, racial attitudes in the U.S. and identity politics.
Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is a Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University and the Co-Director of the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). Her research interests include Hip Hop culture, popular culture, political behavior, political attitudes, African-American politics, Black women and Politics, political psychology and public opinion.
Her current research examines the relationship between political rap music and racial attitudes in a book (with Adolphus Belk, Jr and Lestina Dongo) tentatively titled, Check the Rhyme: Political Rap Music and Racial Attitudes (New York University Press). Additionally, she is curating a searchable database of Political Rap songs that will debut in 2024.
She recently published a co-edited volume with Jonathan Gayles entitled Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture (Routledge Press 2023). Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has also published a co-edited volume with Adolphus Belk Jr entitled For the Culture: Hip-Hop and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press, 2022) a twenty-chapter text examining various relationships between Hip-Hop culture and social justice. Additionally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey published (2015) a book with the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes.
Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has published over 5 articles and 7 book chapters in addition to the three books she has authored or edited. These articles have been published in a variety of journals including the journals, Ethnic Studies Review, New Political Science, and Du Bois Review. She is also the winner of numerous awards including the Provost’s Outstanding Tenure Track Faculty Achievement Award (2023) and their Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) (2022) award as well as the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award (2020). Currently, she serves as the Co-Principal Investigator on two Mellon Foundation grants “Intersectionality in the American South,” and the “Humanities Inclusivity Program,” totaling over 2 million dollars and as the project director of a Fulbright-Hays Study Abroad grant to experience Afro-Brazilian culture in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil of $143,000.
In 2017, she hosted the first political Hip Hop conference at Georgia State University entitled, Behind the Music: Hip Hop and Social Justice, which examined the ways in which social justice is addressed and expressed within Hip Hop culture. In 2018, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey authored an article for The Conversation entitled Rap Music’s Path from Pariah to Pulitzer which received over 22,000 reads and she was a Nasir Jones/ W. E. B. Du Bois Hip-Hop Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Later that year she completed two talks in Ingelheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany discussing the relevance and importance of rap music, activism and social justice and she received her certificate in psychoanalysis from Emory University’s Psychoanalytic Institute.
In 2019, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey presented a TedX talk entitled “The Political Impact of Rap Music” and in 2020, she hosted Beyond the Culture: Black Popular Culture and Social Justice at Georgia State University. In 2021, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey founded the podcast The Intersection: Where Black Popular Culture Meets Social Justice, which can be found on all of your podcasts servers. Also, in 2021 Dr. Bonnette-Bailey appeared in the Bounce Network original documentary Protect or Neglect, where she discussed the history of policing and the disparities within the Black community and on February 23, 2023 was featured in the ABC news documentary titled Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial which aired on Hulu. Additionally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey curated the second iteration of the conference Beyond the Culture II in February 2023 and alongside colleagues, an international conference to celebrate Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary entitled, Hip-Hop is 50!: The Golden Anniversary Conference. Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has been interviewed by numerous news outlets including VOX, the AJC, CBS 46, Washington Post, W.A.B.E., BBC, Atlanta Magazine, ABC News, 11 Alive News, and TheGrio among many other news outlets.
Finally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey serves as the PI or Co-PI on numerous grants including the $524,000 Mellon Foundation funded grant, Intersectionality in the American South, as well as the 1.25 million dollar Mellon Foundation funded grant Humanities Inclusivity Program. Recently, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad fellowship, which allows her and her co-directors, to take 16 collegiate and public-school educators as well as 4 undergraduate students to Bahia, Brazil to study Afro-Brazilian culture.
- Help students identify and solidify their interests and eligibility for graduate school
- Provide academic mentoring and support that keeps students on track toward successful graduate school applications and career progressions, both directly to students and indirectly through faculty development
- Expand research opportunities on all campuses
Welcome to the CASA! As a participant at CASA, we invite you to complete this Intake Screening and Planning Tool. The purpose is to think about where you are in your academic process and compare that with where you want to go over the next couple of years. Revisit this document frequently updating it as you complete the tasks outlined here.
What are my options: Researching Graduate Schools – (Pre-Recorded)
Objective: To instruct students on what they should consider and look for when researching potential graduate schools to attend.
How do I Ask?: Requesting Letters of Recommendation (Pre-recorded)
Objective: Instruct students on the proper ways to request letters of recommendation.
“While the session was primarily geared toward those studying the arts and humanities, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey was very helpful in getting me listings for various STEM summer research opportunities that CASA has on file. She also recommended to the guests how we should go about preparing a CV (which I did not realize is different from a resume) and how we should also prepare our “personal mission statement” and try to keep an up to date transcript at all times as well as a letter of recommendation, if possible. All of this was helpful in me realizing that for me to get a summer research opportunity I need to be going about it in a very systematic and hopefully efficient manner. As regards environmental geosciences, the field is very broad, and while it can easily be applied to many topics in science, that makes it difficult to know where to even start. I have taken to using the NSF site to look up sponsored REU across the United States and I already have my eye on several in California related to hydrology and water sciences that I hope I can get into.
Attending the information session provided me with some very necessary information that I was not thinking about up until she mentioned it. I should have considered these things, but she laid it all out very plainly and with a healthy dose of urgency. I am not going to be leaving getting a summer research opportunity up to chance. If I am unable to acquire a position this summer I will be trying again for next summer.”