The Black Studies Podcast

Ashley Newby and John E. Drabinski

The Black Studies Podcast is a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

  1. 2d ago

    Earl Brooks - Department of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Earl Brooks, Associate Professor in the Department of English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He teaches courses in sound studies, African American rhetorical traditions, media literacy, rhetorical theory, and composition. His recent book, On Rhetoric and Black Music (Wayne State University Press), examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music. His work also appears in Sounding Out!, Rhetoric Review, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, Langston Hughes Review, and College Composition and Communication. Brooks is also a proud alumnus of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, and he serves as a UMBC McNair Faculty Mentor and advisory board member.

    Earl Brooks - Department of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

  2. 4d ago

    Yveline Alexis - Department of Africana Studies, Oberlin College

    This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today’s conversation is with Yveline Alexis, who teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at Oberlin College.She is an historian with interests in memory studies, oral histories, and archive work, with particular focus on the politics of Haitian resistance to occupation among intellectuals, artists, and religious figures. She is the author of a number of articles as well the book Haiti Fights Back: The Life & Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte (2021). In this conversation, we discuss the urgency of multilingual research, the virtues of disorderly methods, and the expansive vision of historical work in Black Studies.

    Yveline Alexis - Department of Africana Studies, Oberlin College

  3. 6d ago

    Shana L. Redmond - Department of English, Columbia University

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Shana L. Redmond, who teachings in the Department of English at Columbia University. She is a Grammy-nominated creator, writer, and scholar of race, culture, and power. She is the author of two acclaimed books: Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU, 2014) and the multi-award winning, Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020). A 2023 Guggenheim fellow, her current project is a forensic listening to Black life before mourning. She is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race at Columbia University in New York City where she tends the open collaborative, The Radio in the Orchard (TRiO).

    Shana L. Redmond - Department of English, Columbia University

  4. Sep 11

    Mabel Wilson - Departments of Architecture and of African American and African Diasporic Studies, Columbia University

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Mabel Wilson, who teaches in the Departments of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Through her transdisciplinary practice Studio&, Wilson makes visible and legible the ways that anti-black racism shapes the built environment along with the ways that blackness creates spaces of imagination, refusal, and desire. She was a member of the design team for the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers (2020) at the University of Virginia.  For the Museum of Modern Art, she co-curated the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021). Wilson has published Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012). She is currently developing the manuscript for her third book Building Race and Nation: Slavery, Dispossession, and American Civic Architecture.

    Mabel Wilson - Departments of Architecture and of African American and African Diasporic Studies, Columbia University

  5. Sep 9

    Brandon Byrd - Department of African American Studies, Vanderbilt University

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Brandon Byrd, who teaches in the Departments of History and of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University. He is a historian of Black intellectual and social history, with a special focus on the United States and Haiti. He is the author of The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti and the co-editor of two books, Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History and Haiti for the Haitians.

    Brandon Byrd - Department of African American Studies, Vanderbilt University

  6. Sep 7

    James Smethurst - Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

    This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today’s conversation is with James Smethurst, who teaches in the Department of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Along with many essays on African American music, history, and culture, he is the author of Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States (2003), The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (2005), The African American Roots of Modernism: Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance (2011), Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity (2020) and co-editor with Chris Green and Rachel Rubin of Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction (2006) and co-editor with John Bracey and Sonia Sanchez of SOS—Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader (2014). In this conversation, we discuss the politics of African American history, cultural studies, and the place of music in Black Studies methodology and in the work of Black study.

    James Smethurst - Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

  7. Sep 4

    Marcia Chatelain - Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Marcia Chatelain, Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  Previously, she was a Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.  She is a proud native of Chicago, Illinois, and I'm an even prouder graduate of the following schools: St. Ignatius College Prep, the University of Missouri-Columbia (B.A. Journalism/Religious Studies), and Brown University (A.M. and Ph.D., American Civilization). She has been honored to be named a Harry S. Truman Scholar (2000), Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life Amethyst Award recipient (2009), German Marshall Fund of the U.S. American Fellow (2011), Ford Foundation Diversity Fellow (2012), French American Foundation Young Leader (2015),  and National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellow (2017-2018).  Her teaching has been recognized with Georgetown University's  Dorothy M. Brown Teaching Award (2014), the Edward Bunn, S.J. Award for Faculty Excellence (2015), and the College Academic Council's Faculty Award (2016).  In 2016, the Chronicle of Higher Education named me a Top Influencer in Higher Education in recognition of my curation of #FergusonSyllabus, a response to the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.  She is a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.  Her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America won several awards including a 2022 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing, 2021 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2019-2021 Alfred and Fay Chandler Book Award from Harvard’s Business History Review, the 2021 Hagley Prize in Business History, the 2021 Organization of American Historians Lawrence W. Levine Award, the  2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award, and the 2020 Hooks National Book Award.

    Marcia Chatelain - Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

  8. Sep 2

    Yvonne Chireau - Department of Black Studies, Swarthmore College

    This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Yvonne Chireau, Peggy Chan Professor of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus of Religion at Swarthmore College.  She is the author of Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003) and the co-editor of Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (1999). Her current book project is called Graphic Voodoo: Black Religion in the Comic Book Imaginary. Dr. Chireau lives in Delaware County, Pennsylvania with her beloved family and a three-legged cat. Her writings on the intersections of magic, Africana religions, and popular culture tropes of Voodoo can be found online at The Academic Hoodoo (academichoodoo.com).

    Yvonne Chireau - Department of Black Studies, Swarthmore College
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About

The Black Studies Podcast is a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

Information

  • Creator
    Ashley Newby and John E. Drabinski
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    317
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © @TheBlackStudiesPodcast

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