In 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Rankine has taught at Pomona College and was the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

[9] Rankine co-edits (with Juliana Spahr) the anthology series American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language.

Winner of an Academy of American Poets fellowship, Rankine's work Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004), an experimental project, has been acclaimed for its unique blend of poetry, essay, lyric and television imagery.

Of this volume, poet Robert Creeley wrote: "Claudia Rankine here manages an extraordinary melding of means to effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we live in I've yet seen.

Of her work, poet Mark Doty wrote: "Claudia Rankine's formally inventive poems investigate many kinds of boundaries: the unsettled territory between poetry and prose, between the word and the visual image, between what it's like to be a subject and the ways we're defined from outside by skin color, economics, and global corporate culture.

"[17] In a 2023 review in The Guardian of her 2001 collection Plot, critic Kate Kellaway wrote: "It is a bracing, discomfiting and complicated read partly because it breaks a taboo.

"[18] Rankine additionally founded and curates the Racial Imaginary Institute, which she called "a moving collaboration with other collectives, spaces, artists, and organizations towards art exhibitions, readings, dialogues, lectures, performances, and screenings that engage the subject of race.

[24][25] Its mission is to convene "a cultural laboratory in which the racial imaginaries of our time and place are engaged, read, countered, contextualized and demystified.

[24] In 2017, the Whitney Museum presented "Perspectives on Race and Representation: An Evening With the Racial Imaginary Institute" to address the debate sparked by Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket.

[25][28] In the summer of 2018, TRII presented "On Whiteness," an exhibition, symposium, library, residencies, and performances, at The Kitchen in New York.