The Black Studies Podcast

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.

The Black Studies Podcast is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 305 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 85. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts The Black Studies Podcast, a arts show with 305 episodes published.

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  Episode #304

  Alix Chapman - Department of African American Studies, Emory University

  Aug 21, 20261h 1m

  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 Alix Chapman, who teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Emory University. His research and teaching interests include Black Queer Studies, Black Feminism, and anthropology and is the author of Raising the Bottom: Bounce Music and Black Queer Performance in Post-Katrina New Orleans (2026). In this conversation, we discuss the relationship between activism and intellectual life, sexuality and blackness, and the place of ethnographic methods in Black Studies.

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  Episode #303

  Jonathan Howard - Departments of English and Black Studies, Yale University

  Aug 19, 202658 min

  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 Jonathan Howard, who teaches in the Departments of English and African American Studies at Yale University. His research and teaching broadly interrogate western ideas about race and nature, weighing their entangled contribution to the formation of a modern world in ecological peril while also exploring black expressive culture as an alternative site of ecological thought and practice. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including generous support fromthe Fulbright Program, The Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Harrington Fellows Program. His articles can be found at Callaloo , Souls , Atlantic Studies , and Transition Magazine . His first, Inhabitants of the Deep: The Blueness of Blackness , undertakes a black ecocritical study of the water as the diffuse subtext of African American literature. It argues that the blackness which dawned in the oceanic encounter of Middle Passage is best apprehended not as social death but ecological life.

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  Episode #302

  Meredith Gadsby - Department of Africana Studies, Oberlin College

  Aug 17, 20261h 7m

  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 Meredith Gadsby, who teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at Oberlin College. Along with essay on migration, literature, and identity, she is the author of Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and Survival (2006) and co-editor of Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (2003). In this conversation, we discuss the politics of Black study inside and outside the academy, the complexity of thinking diaspora, and the place of literary work in Black Studies.

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  Episode #301

  Errol Henderson - Independent Scholar

  Aug 14, 20261h 16m

  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 Errol Henderson, an Independent Scholar who previously served as an associate professor of Political Science at Penn State University. He earned a PhD in Political Science at University of Michigan with a concentration in World Politics after graduating magna cum laude from Wayne State University. He was the first—and for nearly 20 years—the only tenured African American professor in the Political Science Department at Penn State University. He has authored more than 50 scholarly publications including 5 books; and has an international reputation as a scholar of war. He helped lead the UCAR/BAMIII student protest in 1986-7; and the eleven-day “Study-In” building occupation at Wayne State in 1989. He is working on two books: (1) on the role of white supremacism in world politics; and (2) on black women and the Urban Peace and Justice Movement of the 1980s-90s.

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  Episode #300

  Ashley Newby and John E. Drabinski - Department of African American and Africana Studies, University of Maryland

  Aug 12, 202658 min

  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 widerange 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 between John E. Drabinski and Ashley Newby, both of whom teach in the Department of African American and Africana Studies at University of Maryland, As co-founders and co-hosts of The Black Studies Podcast, our discussion in this episode reflects on the moment of the podcast’s 300th episode, guided by questions sent to us by podcast listeners over social media. We explore how work on the podcast has impacted our understanding of Black Studies, how the podcast has enhanced our teaching and pedagogy, what moments stand out for us across the 300 episodes, feedback we have received from colleagues and listeners, and what hopes we have for the future of the project.

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