Simone Drake is the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of English. Her interdisciplinary research agenda focuses on how people of African descent in the Americas negotiate the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation through the lenses of critical race, gender, and legal studies. She is the author of When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making (University of Chicago Press 2016) and Critical Appropriations: African American Women and the Construction of Transnational Identity (Louisiana State University Press 2014, Southern Literary Studies Series); co-editor of Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke University Press 2020); editor of The Oxford Handbook on African American Women’s Writing (in progress); and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Most recently, she was the Alisa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art where she did research on her recently completed book project “Becoming Educated: A Midwest Story” that is a meditation on the intersection between law, education, visual art, and music in relationship to the desegregation of Columbus (OH) Public Schools. She is the executive producer of the documentary Shutdown and the curator of the public humanities project Black Women’s Birthing Narratives.

Simone is co-PI with Katrina Lee on the American Arbitration Association’s International Center for Dispute Resolution grant “Improving Internal Police Negotiation & Communication Techniques to Improve Police-Civilian Interaction.” She has also conducted train-the-trainer instruction and curriculum for the Ohio State University Police Department. Simone regularly consults with educational institutions, non-profits, corporations, and foundations on best practices and strategies for advancing equity, inclusion, and belonging. Simone serves on various university and community committees and boards, including the OSU Public Safety Advisory Committee, OSU Wexner Center for the Arts Shumate African American Outreach and Engagement Council, the Columbus Division of Police Minority Recruiting Council, and the Achieving Standards of Excellence Foundation.

Simone received her doctorate in English Literature from the University of Maryland-College Park, a Master in the Study of Law from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law along with a dual master’s degree in English and African American and African Studies at OSU, and a bachelor’s degree in Classical Civilization and English from Denison University.