Mark Anthony Neal is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of  African & African American Studies, Professor of English, and Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, where he teaches courses in Black Popular Culture including signature courses on the history of Black Humor, Black Masculinity, and the Motown & American Culture. Neal is the author of six books including the just-published Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive (2022),  What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Public Culture (1999), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture, the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002) and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013), and co-editor, with Murray Forman, of That’s The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (now in its 2nd edition). Neal has been featured in several documentaries including PBS’s Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Netflix’s The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and A&E’s Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution, and even portrayed himself in an episode of the BET scripted drama, Being Mary Jane, which starred Gabrielle Union.

At Duke, Neal directs the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE), which produces original digital content, including the weekly video podcast Left of Black (now in its 13th season), produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. A native of the Bronx, NY,  Neal received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his M.A. and B.A. from the State University of New York at Fredonia.