She has been a Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She received her B.A. from Yale in 1994. At age 27, she received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in the Program in the History of American Civilization, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. After completing a Future Law Professor's Fellowship at Georgetown University Law Center, she joined the faculty of Rutgers School of Law-Camden. At Rutgers, she was awarded the New Professor of the Year award in her first year. At the end of her 5th year, she was promoted to full professor and awarded the Board of Trustees Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2009, after having served as the inaugural Distinguished visiting fellow in 2007-2008. She is the author of two books: More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York University Press, 2011) and Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke University Press, 2004). She also wrote the notes and introduction to the Barnes and Nobles Classics Edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth.
