Zandria F. Robinson, Ph.D. | Department of Black Studies

Dr. Zandria F. Robinson is a writer and ethnographer working on race, gender, sound, and spirit at the crossroads of the living and the dead. A native Memphian and classically trained violinist, Robinson earned the Bachelor of Arts in Literature and African American Studies and the Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Memphis and the Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from Northwestern University. Dr. Robinson’s first book, This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) won the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award from the Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her second monograph, Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life (University of California Press, 2018), co-authored with long-time collaborator Marcus Anthony Hunter (UCLA), won the 2018 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title and the Robert E. Park Book Award from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Robinson’s ancestral memoir, Listening for the Dead, a life-affirming exploration of grief, afterlife connections, and how deep listening to the stories of the dead can inform how we move through the world after experiencing loss, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2027. Her 2016 memoir essay, “Listening for the Country,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Essay, and her essay, “Tyre Nichols Had a Beautiful Life,” earned a 2025 National Association of Black Journalism Award. She is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow and the 2025 recipient of the Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Award for Faculty Excellence from Georgetown University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Robinson is a 2026 Under the Volcano Words of Witness Fellow.

Dr. Robinson’s teaching interests include Black feminist theory, Black popular culture, memoir, urban sociology, and Afro-futurism. She is Past President of the Association of Black Sociologists, a member of the editorial board of Southern Cultures, and a contributing editor at Oxford American. Robinson’s scholarly writing on race, place, and popular culture can be found in several places, including Issues in Race and Society, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, the Annual Review of Sociology, and Contexts. Her popular writing on race, place, and music, as well as her ethnographic profiles of the living and the dead, can be seen in Rolling Stone, Scalawag, Hyperallergic, Believer, Oxford American, NPR, Glamour, MLK50.com and The New York Times Magazine.