Melissa Harris-Lacewell is an African American intellectual and an Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University. Harris-Lacewell received her BA from Wake Forest University and her PhD in political science from Duke University. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2006, Harris-Lacewell taught at North Carolina Central University and the University of Chicago. One of her central concerns is the nexus between African American religious and political thought. Harris-Lacewell has also extensively studied the political aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She has been published in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, which won a 2005 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association.