Dr. Nitasha Tamar Sharma is associate professor of African-American studies, Asian American studies and performance studies at Northwestern University, where she has received several outstanding teaching awards. Her scholarship focuses on Afro/Asian American relations, especially in studying the relationship between the two through hiphop music. Sharma is writing her second book, “Hidden Hapas: Multiracial Blacks and Blackness in Hawai’i.” She recently received the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence Award (2013 to 2016).