The Ethnography of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class in Black Queer Life

Nikki Lane is an interdisciplinary scholar trained as a Cultural and Linguistic Anthropologist. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Women's Studies/Black Queer Studies in the Comparative Women's Studies program at Spelman College. Her work explores issues related to American Popular Culture, African American language practices, and sexual cultures throughout the African Diaspora.
In her writing, research, classrooms, and public lectures, she explores the connections between popular culture and critical theories of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Working often along the edges of academia, she makes contemporary critical theory accessible to broad audiences priding herself on putting complex ideas into everyday language anyone can understand. She specializes in using popular culture as an entry point for discussing complex social theory.
Her first book titled The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)Politics of Respectability explores the use of the word "ratchet" in a community of Black queer women in Washington, DC.