{{short description|African American anthropologist}} {{Lead too long|date=September 2023}} '''Aimee Meredith Cox''' is an American cultural anthropologist, former dancer, and choreographer.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=U-M Alumna Aimee Cox Returns to Discuss Her New Book ''Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship'' |url=http://www.cew.umich.edu/news-story/u-m-alumna-aimee-cox-returns-to-discuss-her-new-book-shapeshifters-black-girls-and-the-choreography-of-citizenship/|access-date=2021-11-06|publisher=Center for the Education of Women, University of Michigan}}</ref>
Her research interests include feminism, social justice, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Aimee Meredith Cox In Conversation|url=https://tisch.nyu.edu/performance-studies/events/ay-2016-17/Aimee-Meredith-Cox|access-date=2021-11-06|publisher=tisch.nyu.edu}}</ref> She is currently associate professor of anthropology and African American studies and director of undergraduate studies at Yale University.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=Aimee Meredith Cox |url=https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/aimee-meredith-cox|access-date=2021-11-06|publisher=Department of African American Studies, Yale University}}</ref> She also serves as professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|last=John|first=Monique|title=Getting to Know Dr. Aimee Cox|url=https://fordhamobserver.com/6229/features/getting-to-know-dr-aimee-cox-dance-vet-and-newest-addition-to-the-african-and-african-american-studies-department-at-fclc/|access-date=2021-11-06|website=The Observer}}</ref> Cox received her BA in anthropology in 1994 from Vassar College and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology in 2006 from University of Michigan.<ref name=":1" />
From 2001 to 2004, Cox served as a director of a Detroit homeless shelter for young women called Alternatives for Girls, where she did her fieldwork while completing her PhD in anthropology at the University of Michigan. Working at the shelter, Cox studied the impact of race, class, gender, and sexuality on the lives of black women.<ref name=":2" /> As part of her work, Cox used dance, poetry, and music to reach out to young women and offer creative outlets of expression.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|last=Cox|first=Aimee Meredith|title=Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship|date=2015|isbn=978-0-8223-5943-2|location=Durham|oclc=892878735}}</ref> In 2005, Cox created the BlackLight Project for the residents of the shelter who wanted to expand their creative experimentation with music and dance to communicate their personal experiences.<ref name=":2" /> During the BlackLight Project which received the Kellogg Foundation grant, Cox helped shelter residence to write down, communicate, and connect their personal stories.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3">{{Cite web|title=Aimee Cox {{!}} Rutgers University – Newark|url=https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/aimee-cox|access-date=2021-11-06|website=www.newark.rutgers.edu}}</ref> Cox touts her experience directing the shelter and the BlackLight Project as inspiration for her book, ''Shapeshifters: Black Girls and Choreography of Citizenship'' (Duke University Press, 2015) that won several awards including the 2017 book award from the Society for the Anthropology of North America and a 2016 Victor TurnerBook Prize in Ethnographic Writing.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":1" />
After completing her fieldwork at Alternatives for Girls and obtaining her PhD, Cox began teaching at Rutgers University–Newark. In 2009, Cox, along with 15 young female leaders, brought the BlackLight project to Newark.<ref name=":3" /> In 2011, Cox began working at Fordham University as an assistant professor of cultural anthropology.<ref name=":2" /> In 2017, Cox joined Yale University as an associate professor of Anthropology and African American Studies.<ref name=":1" />
In addition to her work as an anthropologist, Cox is also a dancer and choreographer who once performed and toured with Ailey II and the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DHT).<ref name=":1" /> She is also on the editorial board of both The Feminist Wire and Public: A Journal of Imagining America.<ref name=":0" /> Additionally, she also serves as an executive board member of the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA) where she was a co-editor of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of ABA.<ref name=":0" />
== Personal life == Aimee Cox has acknowledged her family for helping and motivating her to pursue her scholarly and academic interests.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> She dedicated both her PhD dissertation and book ''Shapeshifters'' to her sister, Jennifer, whose life was infused with the stories of the young women she encountered at the Detroit shelter.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> In her dissertation, Cox also credits her sister for encouraging her to write about and interrogate her personal experiences to identify herself as an individual.<ref name=":4" />
== Education == Aimee Cox completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College, where she received a B.A. in anthropology in 1994. While attending Vassar College, Cox remained actively involved in dance which she states was a major part of her college experience. When Cox was given the option to graduate yearly in 1992 because of her extra college credits, she opted instead to study for a semester at the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH), the first black ballet company. While studying at DTH, she was supported by Lowell Smith, a principal dancer at DTH, who encouraged and advised her to apply to study at the Ailey School, where soon after she was accepted.<ref name=":2" /> She credits her experience learning at Ailey with helping her understand “how dance is about spirit, tradition, and culture.” After studying dance at Ailey School, Cox was also given the opportunity to return and perform professionally.<ref name=":2" />
After receiving her bachelor's degree from Vassar, Cox went on to receive her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan (1998–2006). During her PhD studies, Cox began her fieldwork at Alternatives for Girls, a homeless shelter for young women in Detroit where she examined the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class on the lives of these women.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last=Cox|first=Aimee M.|title=You Can Do Better! Marginalized Black Girls and the Performance of Respectability.|date=2006|publisher=University of Michigan. |isbn=978-0-542-92021-9|oclc=1194838438}}</ref> After spending four years conducting fieldwork at the homeless shelter, Cox wrote about these experiences in her PhD dissertation ''"You Can Do Better!" Marginalized Black Girls and the Performance of Respectability'', an ethnography that outlined and examined the narratives of the young women she encountered during her fieldwork at the Detroit shelter.<ref name=":4" />
== Career == Before becoming a professor, Aimee Cox was a professional dancer, and toured with The Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble/Ailey II.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Aimee Meredith Cox In Conversation|url=https://tisch.nyu.edu/performance-studies/events/ay-2016-17/Aimee-Meredith-Cox|access-date=2021-12-10|website=tisch.nyu.edu}}</ref> She volunteered at Alternatives for Girls in Detroit, then became the director of the homeless shelter from 2002 to 2005. She wrote about her time working at the shelter in her book ''Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship.'' <ref name="news.fordham.edu">{{Cite web|date=2014-01-14|title=Professor's Research Illuminated by the Challenge of Citizenship|url=https://news.fordham.edu/inside-fordham/professors-research-illuminated-by-the-challenge-of-citizenship/|access-date=2021-12-10|website=Fordham Newsroom}}</ref> From 2008 to 2011, she worked at Rutgers University, where she continued the BlackLight Project that she started with the girls from AFG.<ref name=":2" /> She also became a part of the African and African American Studies Department at Fordham University, working as an assistant professor.<ref name="news.fordham.edu"/><ref name=":2"/> At Yale University she worked in the Anthropology and African American Studies department as an associate professor.<ref name="Aimee Meredith Cox">{{Cite web|title=Aimee Meredith Cox|date=9 December 2017 |url=https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/faculty-/aimee-meredith-cox|access-date=2021-12-10|publisher=Center for the Study of Social Difference}}</ref>
== Awards == In 2016, Aimee Cox's book, ''Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship,'' won the Victor Turner Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing.<ref name="Cummings">{{Cite web|last=Cummings|first=Mike|date=2018-05-07|title=Anthropologist Aimee Cox wins Malkiel Scholarship for work on 'slow death'|url=https://news.yale.edu/2018/05/07/anthropologist-aimee-cox-wins-malkiel-scholarship-work-slow-death|access-date=2021-11-30|website=YaleNews}}</ref> It was also an Honorable mention for the Gloria E. Anzaldúa book Prize.<ref name="Aimee Meredith Cox"/> She was honored as the 2017 Woman of the Year by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce & EDC.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Navarro |first=Linda |title=Around Town: Aimee Cox honored during Chamber/EDC Evening in Tuscany|url=https://gazette.com/business/around-town-aimee-cox-honored-during-chamber-edc-evening-in-tuscany/article_f71b7c24-c5c5-5883-94fa-c3fbd780b9c6.html|access-date=2021-11-30|website=Colorado Springs Gazette|date=6 August 2017 }}</ref> She was also awarded the Malkiel Scholarship by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in 2018.<ref name="Cummings"/> In 2021, she became one of four recipients of the Poorvu Family Fund for Academic Innovation award from Yale College.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-02-26|title=Yale College honors recipients of Poorvu award for excellence in teaching|url=https://news.yale.edu/2021/02/26/yale-college-honors-recipients-poorvu-award-excellence-teaching|access-date=2021-11-30|website=YaleNews}}</ref>
== Organizations and groups == Aimee Cox is a fellow for the Black Atlantic Ecologies project at Columbia's Center for the Study of Social Difference. The project considers how Black experiences with peril, punishment, and premature death can provide a rubric for futurity in environmental collapse.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Black Atlantic Ecologies|date=2 July 2020 |url=https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/projects-/black-atlantic-ecologies|access-date=2021-11-06|publisher=Center for the Study of Social Difference}}</ref> She has also been a part of Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, a collective concerned with highlighting pervasive conditions of racism. The group held an event at the New Museum in 2016.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter|url=http://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/1061/black-women-artists-for-black-lives-matter|access-date=2021-11-06|website=www.newmuseum.org}}</ref> Cox was a faculty fellow at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, holding an interactive ritual performance there.<ref>{{Cite web|title=OPENING RITUALS|url=http://www.centerforexperimentalethnography.org/5/post/2019/05/opening-rituals.html|access-date=2021-11-06|website=centerforexperimentalethnography}}</ref>
== Written works ==
=== Major publications === In 2015, Cox published her first book ''Shapeshifters'', an ethnographic study of young Black women in Detroit, aged 15–22. Based on her work in a homeless shelter, Cox explores how young Black women move around the social conditions that restrict them, a process called shapeshifting.<ref name=":5" /> Visual shapeshifting is defined as choreography, and this includes storytelling, physicality, appearance, and responses to social conditions themselves. Cox also interacts with one family, the Brown family, quite extensively, revealing the ways in which family structure has also been subverted due to the lack of male responsibility within the household. Through these experiences, Cox composes a narrative about the ways in which young Black women seek redemption through choreography.
Cox is currently working on a project called "Living Past Slow Death," consisting of two book projects based on research in Cincinnati, Ohio; Jackson, Mississippi; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.<ref name=":1" />
=== Minor publications === Cox has written several minor publications in addition to ''Shapeshifters''. Her most notable work, ''The Body and the City Project: Young Black Women Making Space, Community, and Love in Newark, New Jersey'', is a feminist ethnography which draws on the work she had done in Detroit. Similar to ''Shapeshifters,'' she explores the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and place in telling the stories of the women in Newark.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cox|first=Aimee|date=2014|title=The Body and the City Project: Young Black Women Making Space, Community, and Love in Newark, New Jersey|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/feminist_formations/v026/26.3.cox.html|journal=Feminist Formations|volume=26|issue=3|pages=1–28|doi=10.1353/ff.2014.0029| s2cid=144270568 |issn=2151-7371|url-access=subscription}}</ref> She also contributed to the publication ''Oracular Practice, Crip Bodies and the Poetry of Collaboration'', a collaborative piece on oracular practice stemming from involvement in the ''Tiresias'' project at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.<ref>{{Citation|last1=Heit|first1=Stephanie|title=Hurricane poetics and crip psychogeographies|date=2019-12-05|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429032202-24|work=Geopoetics in Practice|pages=297–310|location=Abingdon, Oxon|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-429-03220-2|access-date=2021-12-13|last2=Kuppers|first2=Petra| doi=10.4324/9780429032202-24 | s2cid=240583218 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> She wrote a book review for the books ''In Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence'' and ''Why Girls Fight: Female Youth Violence in the Inner City'' for the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Meredith Cox|first=Aimee|date=March 2012|title=Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence. By Nikki Jones. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.Why Girls Fight: Female Youth Violence in the Inner City. By Cindy D. Ness. New York: New York University Press, 2010.|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/662738|journal=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society|volume=37|issue=3|pages=764–773|doi=10.1086/662738|issn=0097-9740|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Last year, she collaborated on a drama review of ''Fremde Tänze,'' a performance by Nelisiwe Xaba.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Manning|first=Susan|date=June 2020|title=Cross-Viewing in Berlin and Chicago: Nelisiwe Xaba's Fremde Tänze|journal=TDR/The Drama Review|volume=64|issue=2|pages=54–72|doi=10.1162/dram_a_00917| s2cid=218686590 |issn=1054-2043|doi-access=free}}</ref> As a frequent collaborator on Transforming Anthropology, she published a work titled ''Can Anthropology Get Free?'' in 2020.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cox|first=Aimee Meredith|date=October 2020|title=Can Anthropology Get Free?|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/traa.12186|journal=Transforming Anthropology|volume=28|issue=2|pages=118–120|doi=10.1111/traa.12186| s2cid=225103982 |issn=1051-0559|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Additionally, she published several editorials during her time as an editor.
=== Writer's profile === Aimee Cox's written work is both an extension of her field of study and her interest in dance. From an anthropological perspective, she studies the intersectionality race, location, class, and gender through the lens of performance. Her work in Detroit has informed much of her written works from ''Shapeshifters'' to several minor publications. She also studies performance more closely as well, tying in her own experiences with performance to other performances that she observes. Her work serves to not only tell the stories of Black women but create an academic space to explore the relationship between performance and intersectionality, specifically concerning Black women. Given the ethnographic nature of her work, much of it is a performance itself, one that reshapes the narrative concerning Black women.
== References == <references />
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cox, Aimee}} Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:21st-century African-American writers Category:African-American cultural history