Noliwe M. Rooks, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature in Africana Studies and the American Studies Program, knows that the lived experience can be the spark that leads to scientific insight and award-winning scholarly writing. Her approach may not seem that odd in today’s academia, but back in the mid-1990s, when she was a graduate student about to embark on her dissertation research, it was unheard of.
“The personal is political,” she says in this Cornell Research article. “And it’s appropriate for scholarly investigation.”