Racquel Gates

Assistant Professor
Center for the Arts (1P) room 229
Telephone: (718) 982-2549
Racquel.Gates (at) csi.cuny.edu

Ph.D., Northwestern University
M.A., University of Chicago
B.S., Georgetown University

Racquel Gates received her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University after getting her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.S. from Georgetown University. She specializes in African American media, particularly representations of race in popular film and television. Her dissertation, Acting White: African Americans, Whiteface, and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture, examines how African-American performances of whiteface in the post-Civil Rights era operate as a means of strategically navigating shifting tropes of blackness across time. In addition to film and media theory, Dr. Gates' research also incorporates gender, queer, and critical race theories.