Biography

Kyle T. Mays (Black/Saginaw Anishinaabe) is a transdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual of Indigenous studies, Afro-Indigenous studies, urban history, and Indigenous popular culture. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 2015. At present, he is working on three books. The first is titled, Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (Forthcoming, June 2018, SUNY Press). This book explores how Indigenous Hip Hop artists challenge settler colonialism and construct modern, Indigenous identities through Hip Hop culture. The second book is titled, The Indigenous Motor City: Indigenous People and the Making of Modern Detroit (under contract with the University of Washington Press). This book examines how Indigenous people and representations of them were central to the development of Detroit, from the late 19th century the present. He is also co-editing an anthology titled, Decolonizing Hip Hop: Blackness and Indigeneity in Hip Hop Culture (under contract with Sense Publishers: Youth, Media, and Culture Series).