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About Me

Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. (aka "Professor G") is a new brand of scholar-teacher. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor who teaches ethnomusicology, anthropology, and black studies at Baruch College-CUNY. My brand name is Kyraocity Works - Voicing the Unspoken through Song, Scholarship and Social Media.

ABOUT ME: Selling hip-hop studies and gender analysis in a world where particularly black girls' and women’s bodies seem to do the grunt work of exploitation in the visual world of rap videos is a tough product to pitch to students and academics alike. That is, until I throw my new jack pedagogy at ‘em.

I have an award-winning book titled The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (NYU Press). I am a public speaker and facilitator of conversations about race--I believe anything that separates the human race is a form of racism. I am a singer-songwriter who is a classically-trained musician, a jazz vocalist who scats, and I write really emotional and enlightening R&B songs that offer touch as a revolution. And I love to write from a poetic realm. Like this start to an essay on hip-hop feminism:

"I remember the first weeks I ever taught hip-hop as music in 1996. My debut as a teaching-scholar was at the University of Virginia which was one of the top public universities in the country where 12% of the student population was of African descent. U.Va. graduated black students at nearly the same rate as white students over a five year period. That golden era is gone at most public universities around the country unless we’re talking about HBCs and HBCUs. I wrote a poem for my first day of class planting myself firmly in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson’s central campus often referred to as “The Lawn”:

Hip-hop’s come to The Lawn, kn’a mean??!?
No more margins to front or center
Black Popular Music is the name of this record.
I’m Professor G, with my P-H-and-D, tryin’ to tell you that this…ain’t…no…joke!
I’m truly professin’ hip-hop.
I’m truly a professor of hip-hop
(that don’t mean I know e’ry’thang, jus’ means I got a jawb— to represent.)"

I dare to defy boundaries. Speak to students as adults. Invite conflict. Take risks and fail very big (ask me about my failed marriage to a guy I met on FB). But I LOVE education. Higher education.

While K-12 is important. Higher ed loses over 7 million undergrads to dropping out a year. That's the size of the active users on FB. The other 16 million here in the US are failing miserably by international standards in more than just math and science.

I am committed to that revolution.

Check out the Nokia documentary featuring my work as a TED Fellow
http://europe.nokia.com/explore-services/email/responsiveness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p352_cQ-Rgw

Contact her about speaking engagements, performance, or workshops at kyraocity@gmail.com

Location:
United States, New York, NY
Current organization:
Ford Foundatiion Postdoctoral Diversity Fellow
Past organizations:
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
Current role:
Adjunct Associate Professor, Baruch College-CUNY
Gender:
Female
Areas of expertise:
Social Media, Intimacy & Relationship Coaching, Diversity Consulting, Coaching Educators, Communication and Leadership, Curation, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education , Teaching and Learning Consultant, Students, Design, Teaching, Critical Thinking, Comprehension
I am:
Blogger, Change Agent, Connector, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Job-seeker, Life mentor, Musician, Social entrepreneur, Writer/Editor
Associations:
TED Fellows 2009, Twitter @ kyraocity, Society for Ethnomusicology, American Anthropological Association, Landmark Education
My website links:
Kyraocity Works, Nokia Responsiveness Documentary on Kyra as TED Fellow
Universities:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, NYU, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
TED conferences attended:
TEDWomen, TED2009
Member Picture Member Picture Member Picture Member Picture Member Picture

TEDCRED 100+ TED FellowAssociate

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Useful failures, singing, connecting and curation, laughter, adult playdates, getting in front of large groups and shifting their listening of what's possible with race, gender and education

An idea worth spreading

Agree to be offended. A design principle for human interactions around what stops us in hard to be with conversations about race, sex, generation gaps and other differences where thinking we are better than or not as good as another group tends to show up. Agree to be Offended + Get Connected!

What if we had the freedom to be offended and stay connected? What would be possible for you and your world? And around what?

Talk to me about

What I am passionate about empowering emerging adulthood and their greatness in higher education--http://tiny.cc/5S4IC.
Ebooks http://bit.ly/d1M0J

People don't know that I'm good at

Landing on my feet in the face of what seems like disaster. Moving a crowd with my singing (not singing that much lately).

My TED Story

My TED story? Hmm. I fell in love with YouTube and TED TALKS simultaneously when I first saw Hans Gosling's presentation. Years later I sponsored a Pangea Film Day Event at Baruch College in May 2008 with 52 people from the school and local community.

In 2007 I wrote here of a passionate desire to attend TED2008. In 2009 I became an inaugural TED Fellow which altered reality for me.

I showed my students Chris Abani's TED talk on our shared humanity and they were moved to tears. We closed the Fall '08 term with the TED talk by Majora Carter and the lid came off. We did a creative community service project asking college students to donate $ to the OLPC campaign by asking what can $199US buy in your home country.

Several TEDsters have visited my classroom incl. RuthAnn and Bill Harnisch, Bill Jensen, and Joshua Klein. In the fall of 2009, I performed at TEDxEast in NYC with Tomas Doncker, spoke at TEDx AMS in Amsterdam, and am currently organizing TEDx salons in Brooklyn, NY

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +155.60 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • A reply on Talk: Colin Powell: Kids need structure

    Mar 14 2013: I cannot speak for Colin Powell, but I wouldn't say your view and his are incompatible and there is a serious need for loving discipline and honor of adults in the neighborhoods where I grew up outside of DC and here in the Lower East Side of NYC, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx and I think I'd be inspired if Colin Powell showed up at my school as a student or a parent. There is no one panacea. This is about everyone helping where they can. It ain't for everyone.
  • +2

    A reply on Talk: Colin Powell: Kids need structure

    Mar 14 2013: Whoa! "Basically all the can do is suspend kids which is what they want anyway. Parents need to step up and stop painting police and the rule of law as enemies" Whoa!! Where I lived in the BedStuy/Crown Hghts Brooklyn area 2 years ago, where i lived for 5 years, I can attest since I am also an educator that students DO NOT want to be suspended. Those kids just don't go to school (Why would you go to school if you didn't want to to get suspended--false logic and I would say generalized stereotyping at best).

    Children in our worst schools black and white, are bored and not being challenged in areas that would matter in distressed neighborhoods where the unemployment rate for black and latino young people is 50-70%. They need a future and have none. So school is a prison to nowhere for most of those kinds of kids. But generally most kids WANT to be in school. AND as we experienced another killing of a young person by the police, until you've walked in the shoes of a black parent in BedStuy or East New York, you need to stop spewing your opinion as fact. PLease be compassionate at least and humble that everything is available us all (TED ain't the world).
  • +1

    A reply on Talk: Colin Powell: Kids need structure

    Mar 9 2013: As a college professor now for 15 years, I don't think what Chomsky is referring to and what Powell is offering are synonymous. College students in most institutions where I have taught (and I have been at 3 high ranked schools -- one private (NYU) and three public (Michigan, UVa and CUNY). Imagine as you may have experienced yourself that each student among 15K to 35K undergrads has to take 4-5 classes a term by professors with varying styles of discipline, learning, punishment and in most of those classes talking is at a minimum, writing your own thoughts is normally absent, having space to fulfill something that matters to you varies from class to class but what seems consistent is you're not allowed to be you. That is what Chomsky and I as well are out to challenge.

    Powelll is talking, as previous comments above have noted, about social integration and connection which is lacking for those who are behind by 3rd grade. But what he offers is amazing given his own record up through college of being a C student.

    It would be simplistic to follow the line of thinking that C students like he and let's say Bush are the problem. Or you could also argue that the school system kills the creativity that is available from the real resources in college--the students. The only complaint I have with his talk is that I wish he didn't end it with the govt mantra of leave no child behind which has been a travesty to kids of color in my opinion.

  • A reply on Talk: Colin Powell: Kids need structure

    Mar 9 2013: He didnt say anything about promoting creativity. I think most immigrant and low income children can discover creativity on their own. What many, and I include myself even now as a professor, lack is discipline and self-organized structure which you learn from having it modeled for you by social institutions from family, to school, and for some inscription in the military, despite disagreeing with the ultimate workings of our military even under Powell--the structure is a necessity in our cognitive development from adolescence to emerging adulthood to adulthood as it develops throughout our lives. So if you listen like this is about creativity, you miss what Powell is sharing. It works for him. I think it's missing not only in K-12 ed but also and maybe more so in most public institutions of higher learning where the dropout rate is 40% (after being 60% nationally in high school). Discipline and structure are the balance to creativity and idea generation. Read the book Willpower by Baumeister and Tierney!

  • A comment on Talk: Three Little Pigs

    Feb 26 2013: The Guardian is my fav news outlet and loved this ad!!
  • +2

    A comment on Talk: Find Your Understanding

    Feb 26 2013: That is a great commercial and narrative!! best one i've seen.

  • A reply on Talk: Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

    Jul 25 2012: I don't think she was her first follower. She was his first influential public supporter. I among many others were his first followers. Those of us who paid $20 and $25 a month to get his message out there. One of my students paid more than I did per month up through Sept of 2008.
  • +4

    A comment on Talk: Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

    Jul 25 2012: Derek is a great leader and a follower of his people. I am one of his followers from CDBaby, the company he sold. But he still stays in touch with me. Remembers me and I him!!
  • +6

    A comment on Talk: Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

    Jul 25 2012: I love this talk!!! I think I could watch it once a week for the pure laughter it inspires, for the genius of the practice it promotes (I did the 21 days of gratitude--awesome!), and for the impressiveness of the TED talk itself. Brilliant!
  • +1

    A comment on Talk: Cesar Harada: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills

    Jul 6 2012: Love this. Great talk. Plan to show to my anthro students who are still grappling with the power and impact of open sharing in the classroom relative to sustaining us--people--as a primary resource in education.
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