This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today’s conversation is with Sarah Jane Cervenak, who teaches in the Departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African American and African Diaspora Studies at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. In addition to a number of scholarly articles, she is the author of Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom (2014) and Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life (2022). With J. Kameron Carter, she is co-editor of the series Black Outdoors on Duke University Press. Across this conversation, we discuss the relation between performance studies and Black Studies, the meaning of Black study in the classroom, and the place of expressive culture in the field.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today's conversation is with Sonja Lanehart, who teaches in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona where her scholarship focuses on sociolinguistics and language variation, language and education in African American communities, language and identity, and African American education from Black Feminist, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory perspectives. In addition to a number of important articles on African American linguistic practices, she is the author and editor of a number of books including Sista, Speak!: Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy, Language in African American Communities, and editor of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language. In this conversation, we discuss the horizons of linguistic research in a Black Studies frame, the place of gender and sexuality in understanding African American linguistic practices, and how to think about teaching in politically fraught times.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today’s conversation is with Walter Greason, who teaches in the Department of History at Macalester College. In addition to a number of scholarly and public facing publications, projects such as The Racial Violence Syllabus, The T. Thomas Fortune Center, and The Wakanda Syllabus, he is the author of a number of groundbreaking works, including The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey (2010), Suburban Erasure: How the Suburbs Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey (2012), and most recently, in collaboration with Tim Fielder, The Graphic History of Hip Hop (2024). Across this conversation, we discuss the relation between historical research and Black Studies work, the political significance of the study of Black life, and the intersections of teaching, writing, and direct action aimed at racial justice.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today’s conversation is with Saida Grundy, who teaches in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology at Boston University. In addition to a number of scholarly and public facing publications, she is the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man (2022). Across this conversation, we discuss the relation between sociological research and Black Studies work, the political significance of the study of Black life, and the complex intersection of movement work and research.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies. In addition to many academic and public facing essays, he is the author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2008) and Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Belknap Press, 2020). He is the producer for Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), an audiovisual documentary broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens, and the short video series The Bigger Picture (2022) for PBS Digital Studios.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today’s conversation is with Reighan Gillam, who teaches in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth University. Along with a number of scholarly articles, she has published Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (2022) and is completing a book project titled Diasporic Agency: Transnational Racial Leverage and Challenges to Exceptionalism in Brazil. As well, she is the host of a podcast series on the New Books Network that was recently honored for its public facing scholarship work by the American Anthropological Association. In this conversation, we discuss the place of anthropological methods and sensibilities in the field of Black Studies, the cultural importance of transnational exchange, and the place of Brazil and related Latin American sites in the Black Studies imagination.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today's conversation is between me and John E. Drabinski, my department colleague in the Department of African American and Africana Studies at the University of Maryland. As co-hosts of The Black Studies Podcast, we wanted to close out the first calendar year of the project with a reflection on the series thus far, sharing our key takeaways and the insights we've gained through the first seventy discussions of the past and future of the field. In this conversation, we discuss what for us has been both expected and unexpected in the project, what new horizons podcast episodes have opened up for us, and what new critical questions are guiding our evolving portraits of the field.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, 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.

Today’s conversation is with Ed Pavlić, Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Georgia, where he also holds an affiliation with the faculty of Creative Writing. In addition to a series of scholarly and popular essays, he is the author of a number of books and poetry collections, including most recently Call it in the Air (2022), Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes (2021), and is currently composing an intellectual biography of James Baldwin rooted in newly discovered archival materials. In this conversation, we discuss the relation between music and literature in the Black Studies tradition, the place of community in the formal and everyday practice of Black study, and importance of conversation, critical work, and creative expression.