The Black Studies Podcast

Ashley Newby and John E. Drabinski
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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. Ronald Zeigler - Director, Nyumburu Cultural Center, University of Maryland

    1H AGO

    Ronald Zeigler - Director, Nyumburu Cultural Center, University of Maryland

    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 Dr. Ronald Zeigler, former director of Nyumburu Cultural Center for 25 years; colleague who worked as adjuncted in the African American and Africana Studies Department integral part of the Black community on campus for 47 years.

    56 min
  2. Deborah Gray White - Department of History, Rutgers University

    2D AGO

    Deborah Gray White - Department of History, Rutgers 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 Deborah Gray White, an emeritus Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is author of Ar’n’t I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South; Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994; several K-12 textbooks on United States History, and Let My People Go, African Americans 1804-1860.  In 2008, she published an edited work entitled Telling Histories: Black Women in the Ivory Tower, a collection of personal narratives written by African American women historians that chronicle the entry of black women into the modern historical profession and the development of the field of black women’s history. Freedom On My Mind: A History of African Americans, a co-authored college text, is in its third edition. As a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C, and as a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, White conducted research on  Lost in the USA: American Identity from the Promise Keepers to the Million Mom March.  She holds the Carter G. Woodson Medallion and the Frederick Douglass Medal for excellence in African American history, and in 2019 was awarded the Stephen A. Ambrose Oral History Award. From 2016-2021 she co-directed the “Scarlet and Black Project” which investigated Native Americans and African Americans in the history of Rutgers University and is co-editor of the three-part Scarlet and Black series that explores this history. In 2024, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History awarded her its Living Legacy Award for her work in establishing the field of African American women’s history. She is currently at work on an autobiography, tentatively titled “Winning Against Ugly: A Black Historian’s Tale of Love, Loss, and the Historical Profession.”

    54 min
  3. Paul C. Taylor - Department of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles

    4D AGO

    Paul C. Taylor - Department of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles

    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 Paul C. Taylor, who teaches in the Department of Philosophy at University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to a number of scholarly essays and edited collections on philosophy and the question of race, he is the author of Race: A Philosophical Introduction (2003), On Obama (2015), and Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics (2016). He is currently at work on two book-length projects: Dark Futures and Uneasy Sanctuary: Rethinking Race-Thinking.In this conversation, we discuss the place of philosophical thinking in the study of Black life, critical theory as a form of Black study, and the intersection of aesthetic questions and critical theories of race in the field of Black Studies.

    49 min
  4. Joanna Davis-McElligatt - Department of English, University of North Texas

    FEB 6

    Joanna Davis-McElligatt - Department of English, University of North Texas

    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 Joanna Davis-McElligatt, who teaches in the Department of English at University of North Texas. In addition to a number of scholarly essays and edited collections on literature and graphic arts, she is the author of the forthcoming Black Aliens: Narrative Spacetime in the Cosmic Diaspora (2026).In this conversation, we discuss the place of the Black literary tradition in the study of Black life, disciplinary limits and possibilities, and how comics, graphic arts, and aesthetic questions they raise expand the Black Studies imagination.

    50 min
  5. Robin D. G. Kelley - Department of African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

    FEB 4

    Robin D. G. Kelley - Department of African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

    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 Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.  His books include, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009) Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990, 2nd ed. 2015); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002, New Ed. 2020);  Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (Free Press 1994); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); and forthcoming Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life (Henry Holt, 2026).  He also co-edited (with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor), Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies (2023); (with Jesse Benjamin), Walter Rodney, The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World  (2018); (with Stephen Tuck) The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (2015);  (with Franklin Rosemont) Black, Brown, and Beige:  Surrealist Writings from Africa and the African Diaspora (2009); (with Earl Lewis) To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (2000); and (with Sidney J. Lemelle), Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (1995).  Kelley’s articles and essays have appeared in dozens of several anthologies, journals, and magazines, including Hammer and Hope;  American Quarterly; African Studies Review;  Journal of American History; New Labor Forum; The Nation; New York Times; New York Review of Books;   Radical History Review; Transition; Black Scholar; Dissent; Rethinking Marxism; Black Music Research Journal; Callaloo; Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir; and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor.

    1h 10m
  6. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White - Department of Africana Studies, Morehouse College

    FEB 2

    Clarissa Myrick-Harris White - Department of Africana Studies, Morehouse 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 Clarissa Myrick-Harris White, PhD, who is a tenured full Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and History at Morehouse College. She leads the college's Movement, Memory, and Justice Project and was co-founder of the Morehouse Black Men's Research Institute. Previously she served as Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, Associate Provost for Curricular and Pedagogical Initiatives and more recently Chair of the Humanities Division at Morehouse. Dr. Myrick-Harris White is currently Co-Editor-In-Chief of The Black Scholar Journal. Her research and publications focus on the intersection of race, class, culture, and gender in the quest for social change and justice, emphasizing leadership during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

    1h 29m
  7. Nathan Dize - Department of French, Washington University

    JAN 30

    Nathan Dize - Department of French, Washington 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 Nathan H. Dize, who teaches in the Department of French at Washington University in Saint Louis, and his work is situated at the intersection of French Caribbean literary and intellectual history, African Diaspora studies, translation studies. He is currently working on two projects: Attending to the Dead: Haitian Literature and the Practice of Mourning (SUNY Press) and Handle with Care: The Legacies of African American Translators of Francophone Literature (LSU Press). Nathan is also a translator of Haitian literature, and his translations include the novels Duels by Néhémy Dahomey, The Immortals and The Emperor by Makenzy Orcel, I Am Alive by Kettly Mars, and Antoine of Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot. He is also a founding member of the Kwazman Vwa collective, a member of the digital networks of Fanm Rebèl and Rendering Revolution: Sartorial Approaches to Haitian History, and a founding editor of the digital history project, A Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789. He is a co-editor of the Global Black Writers in Translation series at Vanderbilt University Press.

    45 min
  8. Robin Brooks - Department of English, University of Pittsburgh

    JAN 28

    Robin Brooks - Department of English, University of Pittsburgh

    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 Robin Brooks, who teaches in the Department of English at University of Pittsburgh. In addition to a number of scholarly essays and journal publications, she is the author of Class Interruptions: Inequality and Division in African Diasporic Women’s Fiction (2022) and at work on a book project tentatively titled Death Proximity: Grief and Emotional Wellness Stories in Black Communities.In this conversation, we discuss the diasporic Black literary tradition, the expansiveness of the field, and the fecundity of mixed-methods research for the study of Black life.

    52 min
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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
    223
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © @TheBlackStudiesPodcast

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