Grammy award-winning producer Patrick “9th Wonder” Douthit and renowned poet Brenda Marie Osbey will become Wake Forest University African American Studies Program faculty for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Douthit will be Professor of the Practice in Residence in African American Studies for fall 2022, where he will teach undergrad seminar, “Where It All Began: A History of Hip Hop.”
Osbey will be Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Residence in African American Studies for spring 2023. She will teach an undergraduate seminar called, “Modernist Africana Poetry of the Americas.”
Douthit – a Winston-Salem native – is an artist and social justice advocate. He has taught at several schools, including Duke University, North Carolina Central University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and Long Island University’s Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment
He is the subject of two documentaries, “The Wonder Year” (2011) and “Hip-Hop Fellow” (2014). He currently serves on the Executive Committee for Hip-Hop and Rap at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2019.
Osbey – a New Orleans native – is an author of poetry and prose nonfiction in English and French. She is currently a Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Library Fellow at Brown University and Washington College.
Osbey has served on the faculty at Dillard University, Louisiana State University, Loyola University, Southern University, UCLA and has held distinguished visiting appointments at Brown University, University of Virginia, and Winston-Salem State University.
Osbey was named the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana in 2005, and she has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and Poetry Society of America.