Renée A. Blake is a Latina Caribbean-American linguistics professor at New York University.
Renée A. Blake is a second-generation Caribbean American by way of Trinidad and Venezuela. She is an associate professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. She also serves as a Faculty Fellow in Residence at New York University.[1]
Blake started and completed her tertiary level education at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford in 1997, with a dissertation entitled, "All O' We is One? Race, class, and language in a Barbados community."[2] Her research examines language contact, race, ethnicity and class with a focus on African-American English, Caribbean English Creoles and New York City English. She has two web-based linguistic sites: Word. The Online Journal on African American English and "Voices of New York".[3]
She is the recipient of several grants including Fulbright, Rockefeller and National Science Foundation. In 2010, she was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award at New York University.[4] She has also served as a consultant to organizations including Disney and the Ford Foundation.
She is the daughter of the film producer Grace Blake and the sister of the actor Andre B. Blake.