Aimee Cox

Aimee Meredith Cox is an American cultural anthropologist, former dancer, and choreographer.

Her research interests include feminism, social justice, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Yale University. She also serves as Professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University. Cox received her BA in anthropology in 1994 from Vassar College and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology in 2006 from University of Michigan.

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. As part of her work, Cox used dance, poetry, and music to reach out to young women and offer creative outlets of expression. 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. During the BlackLight Project which received the Kellogg Foundation grant, Cox helped shelter residence to write down, communicate, and connect their personal stories. 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.

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. In 2011, Cox began working at Fordham University as an assistant professor of cultural anthropology. In 2017, Cox joined Yale University as an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies.

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). She is also on the editorial board of both The Feminist Wire and Public: A Journal of Imagining America. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.