Join us for a book talk and signing with U-M alumna, Aimee Meredith Cox, PhD on Thursday, November 5 from 5:00-6:30pm at the new Munger Graduate Residences, 8th Floor, Rm 8110, 540 Thompson, Ann Arbor. In her book, Dr. Cox explores how young Black women in a Detroit homeless shelter contest stereotypes, critique their status as partial citizens, and negotiate poverty, racism, and gender violence to create and imagine lives for themselves.

Based on eight years of fieldwork at the Fresh Start shelter, Cox shows how the shelter’s residents-who range in age from 15 to 22-employ strategic methods to disrupt the social hierarchies and prescriptive narratives that work to marginalize them. With Shapeshifters, Cox gives a voice to young Black women who find creative and non-normative solutions to the problems that come with being young, Black, and female in America.

Kelly Askew, PhD, Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of Anthropology and DAAS, will be in conversation with Dr. Cox as part of her book talk.

Aimee Meredith Cox, PhD is a cultural anthropologist and tenured professor of African and African AmericanStudies at Fordham University. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan where she also held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for the Education of Women. Her book Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (Duke University Press, 2015) is available on Amazon. Dr. Cox is on the editorial board of The Feminist Wire and on the founding editorial board of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. She is also an executive board member of the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA) and former co-editor of Transforming Anthropology, the peer-reviewed journal of the ABA. In addition, she trained on scholarship with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and toured extensively as a professional dancer with the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble/Ailey II. Aimee was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and 2013-2014 Visiting Professor in New York University’s Anthropology Department.