About
Lester K. Spence is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include studying the impact of black power on black political behavior, developing models that predict the effect of media narratives on black public opinion, and examining the interplay between dominant mainstream political ideologies such as conservatism, liberalism, and neoliberalism, on black political action and thought. He is currently at work on a book called Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop, and Black Politics in which he examines the politics of the production, circulation, and consumption of rap and hip-hop in black discursive spaces.
Spence’s work has appeared in a variety of diverse media outlets including The Washington Post, The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Salon.com, Africana.com, and Blackvoices.com, as well as the American Journal of Political Science, the National Political Science Review, and the Dubois Review: Social Science Research on Race. He can be heard regularly on NPR.