(Photo Courtesy of Patrick Jackson) 

Casarae Gibson is a native of Northern California and currently resides in West Lafayette, Indiana. Casarae has a Master of Arts degree from Purdue University in English and African American Studies and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Johnson C. Smith University (HBCU) in Charlotte, North Carolina with honors. Currently, Casarae is a Ph.D. student and English/African American Studies instructor at Purdue and also teaches at IVY Tech Community College-Lafayette.  

 Casarae's research interests include African American literature that discusses issues of racial uprisings and/or racial discrimination in major urban cities (Harlem, Los-Angeles, and Philadelphia). Casarae examines how literature plays a role in discussing past and present issues of race riots, racial uprisings, and how they still affect the socio-economic statuses of American minorities specifically African-Americans. Because of her research interests and commitment to African American literary scholarship, she serves as the scholar-in-residence of an academic think tank group called Black Thought Collective at Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. BTC is a "dialogue-centered and service-learning group" that engages in intellectual debate(s) beyond the traditional classroom experience "through an Afrocentric perspective." BTC is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students who share a dire concern of learning all aspects of people from the African Diaspora. 

Casarae is actively involved in several organizations such as the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program. As a McNair alum, she speaks to current McNair students about pursuing graduate study and being an affective leader in their respective communities. She also holds speaking engagements for her college alma-mater JCSU as well as her middle school T.R. Smedberg (Elk Grove, California). Casarae is also a member of the College Language Association, the Black Cultural Center of Purdue University (Haraka Writers and Black Thought Collective),Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

Feel free to check out some of her writing in a personal blog called A Black Woman's Disguise as well as her other blog and webshow Rock the Spoken Word which is dedicated to known and unknown spoken word artists and writer's of poetry. 

 Below, is an example of the work that my fellow colleagues and I work on semester long at the Black Cultural Center. The video is a short documentary about our annual fall research tour, where we go to different locations around the United States and Abroad learning about African and African American/Caribbean Diasporic history. In this particular video we went to Philadelphia, PA to study the Black Power Movement. 

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Purdue University Presents: BCC Philadelphia Tour from TheYoungHustla on Vimeo.