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 Carleen Carey, a public educator with over 15 years of experience across K-12 and higher education sectors. Before founding Akoma Leadership Consulting, she served as Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Director of Public Outreach and Equity, College and Career Readiness Manager, and Instructor of Record for government, non-profit, and higher education organizations. In these roles, she led a portfolio of programs including Hidden Histories, EEOC Training Corner, Women’s Leadership Lunch, and Community Coalition. In the K-12 sector, Dr. Carey led the transition to remote education for Career and Technical Education teachers through professional workshops such as Race and Ability in the CTE Classroom, Tech Tune-Ups for CTE Teachers, and Digital Download: Connecting Students with Careers. She also taught Human Diversity, Power, and Opportunity in the Teacher Certification program at Michigan State University. Carey currently teaches "African American Authors from 1700-1900," "African-American Authors from 1900-present," and early American Literature at the University of Maryland Global Campus.

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 Darius Spearman, who teaches in the program in Black Studies at San Diego City College. He is the author of two books, Between the Color Lines: A History of African Americans on the California Frontier from 1769 through Reconstruction (2015) and Legacy of Survival: The Dynamics of the Black Family (2025), as well as two edited volumes under the title Reclaiming Our Stories (2020 and 2021). In this conversation, we discuss the place of region and historical experience in the study of Black life, the critical relationship between ethnic studies and Black Studies, and how commitment to community shifts the meaning of pedagogy and the classroom.

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 Leroy F. Moore, Jr., founder of The Krip-Hop Institute and doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. Moore is an award-winning writer and political organizer, and in this conversation we discuss the nature of activist work, the place of disability in Black Studies, and the history of expressive cultural work of Black disabled artists and musicians.

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 Lee Hawkins, a journalist with The Wall Street Journal and author of the 2025 book I Am Nobody's Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free. In this conversation, we discuss the meaning of personal histories, journalistic work, and the persistence of trauma across time and generation.

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 Meredith D. Clark, who teaches in the Hussman School of Journalism at University of North Carolina, Chapel Heill. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power – covering everything from media processes like newsroom hiring and reporting practices to the digital narratives constructed by social media communities. Clark has studied Black Twitter since 2010, and is currently completing a book-length study of it. TheRoot.com named her as one of the most 100 influential Black Americans on their 2015 Root 100 list.

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 Katherine McKittrick, who teaches in the Department of Gender Studies and is Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of Dear Science and Other Stories (2021), and Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006), as well as editing and contributing to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (2015). Recent projects include the limited-edition boxset, Trick Not Telos (2023), the limited-edition hand-made book, Twenty Dreams (2024),and an installation honoring the poet nourbeSe philip, A Smile Split by the Stars. She has a number of forthcoming projects including Yarns (2027) and the co-edited artbook, Smile (2026). In this conversation, we discuss how questions of gender and sexuality shift the field of Black Studies, the expansiveness of Black Studies insights in thinking diaspora and nation, and the relationship between study, conversation, and the 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 with Valerie Grim, who teaches in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. As a scholar, Grim researches and publishes in the area of twentieth and twenty-first centuries African American rural history. She has conducted research and provided lectures in North America, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Currently, she has completed Between Paternalism and Self-Determination: Rural African American Life in a Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Community, 1910-1970 (revision in process for publication). She has completed a book (also under revision) on the Brooks Farm Community, formerly known as the Brooks Farm plantation located in Sunflower and Leflore Counties in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. Her current book projects - Between Forty Acres and a Class Action: Black Farmers’ Protest against the United States Government, 1995-2010s and Black Land Grant Universities and African American Rural Development, 1990 to the present - focus on the needs of African Americans in rural America and efforts to help them achieve full democratic participation and engagement with federal farm and rural development policies and programs. She also is co-authoring a volume on Rural Students in Higher Education. Grim has edited several journal special issue volumes, including Agency Reduction in the Experiences and Realities of Africana People (International Journal of Africana Studies, 2018); Spirit, Mind, and Body: Research and Engagement in an African American and African Diaspora Studies Graduate Course (Black Diaspora Review, 2011); The Experiences of Rural Women, Children, and Families of Color in U.S. and Global Communities (Rural Women, Families, and Children of Color, 2009); and American Rural and Farm Women (Agricultural History, 1990).

In this conversation, we discuss the meaning of rural histories for thinking gender and race, how Black Studies impacts the study and writing of history, and how Black study forms classrooms, community work, and the historical imagination.

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 Kaila Story, who is the Audre Lorde Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville where teaches in the Departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Pan-African Studies. She is the author of The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On The Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity (out in May 2025). She is also the co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of Louisville Public Media’s Strange Fruit: Musings on Politics, Pop Culture, and Black Gay Life, a popular award-winning podcast. In this conversation, we discuss how questions of gender and sexuality shift the field of Black Studies, the expansiveness of Black Studies insights, and the relationship between study, conversation, and the classroom.