Dr. Simone Drake is the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University.

She is the author of Critical Appropriations: African American Women and the Construction of Transnational Identity (2014) and When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making (2016). Mansion Day School: Reviving the Uplift Tradition, a grant funded project, is under way, along with an edited volume, Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century. She also serves on the editorial board for The Ohio State University Press and Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men.

She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Denison University, Master’s Degree in African American & African Studies and English Literature, as well as a Master’s in the Study of Law, from The Ohio State University, and her Ph.D. in English Literature from University of Maryland, College Park.