Studying the Gullah/Geechee Culture
Melissa Hargrove, lecturer in the Africana Studies program, is recognized as a broadly-trained public anthropologist with ethnographic expertise in Gullah/Geechee culture and underground hip-hop studies. Students in her courses engage in dialogue about coastal environmental sustainability and cultural continuation within and across the broader Gullah/Geechee nation.
Hargrove’s research, teaching, and service interests are framed within the political economy of race and racism across the African diaspora; Gullah/Geechee cultural conservation; gated community development as spatial segregation; space, race, and place in urban contexts/urban renewal and gentrification; contemporary white supremacy; heritage and identity politics in the 21st century; and public, applied, and engaged anthropology. She received her BA, MA, and PhD in anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.