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 Abdul Alkalimat, Professor Emeritus in the Department of African American Studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is one of the original creators and innovators in the field of Black Studies, whose organizing and professional work expanded the field in terms of its professional organizations, rigor of inquiry, curriculum, and political significance. As well, he is the author of pamphlets, scholarly articles, and a number of books including most recently the critical worksA History of Black Studies and The Future of Black Studies, published in 2021 and 2022 by Pluto Press. In this discussion, we explore the nature of Black Studies inquiry, the link between Black Studies scholarly and classroom work and our various publics, and the particular ethical and political obligations that lie at the heart of the field.