Her scholarly and literary writings have been published by the British pavilion for the Venice Bienale, 2003; Broadway/Random House; Gagosian Gallery; Sammlung Goetz Collection; and New York University Press, as well as in journals including Artforum, Artbyte, and Nka: Journal for African Art.
Coleman is a 2003-4 Rockefeller New Media Fellow and a 2004 Ford Foundation fellow. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally at P.S.1 Museum of Contemporary Art, Mirror's Edge exhibition, ARC/Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Gallery, among other venues. She has been working internationally as a sound artist since 1997, with her music appearing on various electronic music labels including SoundLab Records.
Coleman received the BA from Yale University in 1991, and the Ph.D. in comparative literature from NYU in 2004. Before arriving at MIT, she was a 2004 artist-in-residence at the Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam where she completed the art and architectural installation, Music Box. She is currently working on a mongraph entitled Difference Engines: Race as Technology.