Conversations in Atlantic Theory

You’re listening to Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast dedicated to books and ideas generated from and about the Atlantic world. In collaboration with the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, these conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.

Today’s discussion is with Joshua Myers, Associate Professor of Afro American Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.  In addition to a number articles in scholarly journals and popular intellectual venues, he has written three books: We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989, published with New York University Press in 2019, Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition, published with Polity Press in 2021, and the book that occasions our conversation today: Of Black Study, published with Pluto Press in 2023.

You’re listening to Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast dedicated to books and ideas generated from and about the Atlantic world. In collaboration with the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, these conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.

Today’s discussion is with Autumn Womack, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Princeton University, where she teaches and writes on 19th and early 20th century African American literature and cultural history and where she has worked as part of the curatorial team at the Toni Morrison Papers project. She is the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals as well as popular intellectual venues including LA Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. Autumn is the author of the book The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880-1930, which is the occasion for our conversation that follows. The book was published by University of Chicago Press in 2022 and was the winner of the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize in 2023.

This discussion is with Dr. Mark W. Deets, an Assistant Professor of African and World History and the Director of the Center for American Studies and Research at The American University in Cairo. His research and teaching focus on 19 th and 20th century West African social and cultural history, especially in the Senegambian region. His first book, A Country of Defiance: Mapping the Casamance in Senegal, is published in 2023 with Ohio University Press. Dr.Deets has also published his work in The Journal of African History, History in Africa: A Journal of

Method, and the Africa Is A Country blog, among others. Dr. Deets serves as a book review editor for The Journal of West African History. He moved to Cairo in 2017 after obtaining his PhD in African history at Cornell University. He embarked on this academic career after 20

years as a helicopter pilot and a military diplomat in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as a military attaché to the West African countries of Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mauritania. In his final military assignment, Dr. Deets returned to his undergraduate alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, to teach History and to serve as the varsity wrestling officer representative. Dr. Deets grew up in the small town of Beloit, Kansas.

Today’s discussion is with Dr. Marlene Daut , she is a Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University and author of the recently published book Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution. She is series editor of New World Studies at UVA Press, co-editor of Global Black History at Public Books, and has been a featured writer in various magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, Essence, and The Conversation, among others. In this conversation, Dr. Daut argues that discourse around freedom and equality should be linked to what she calls the 1804 Principle that no human being should ever again be colonized, an idea propagated by Haitians. She sheds lights on not-so known 18th and 19th century Haitian revolutionaries, pamphleteers, and political thinkers and their contribution to the Haitian Revolution. 

This discussion is with Dr. Eziaku Nwokocha, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. She is a scholar of Africana religions with expertise in the ethnographic study of Vodou in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Her research is grounded in gender and sexuality studies, visual and material culture and Africana Studies. Previously, Dr. Nwokocha held a position as a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Religion at Princeton University and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton. She obtained a Ph.D. with distinction in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a bachelor's degree in Black studies and Feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Nwokocha was a Ford Predoctoral Fellow during her PhD and Ronald E McNair Scholar as an undergraduate. In this conversation, we discuss her book, Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), an ethnographic study of fashion, spirit possession, and gender and sexuality in contemporary Haitian Vodou, exploring Black religious communities through their innovative ceremonial practices. The book is featured within the series Where Religion Lives. 

Dr. Nwokocha is currently working on her second book project which is tentatively entitled: “‘Tell My Spirit’: Black Queer Women in Haitian Vodou,” which investigates Black queer women’s interactions with Haitian Vodou divinities, their performance of ritual work, and their formation

of religious communities in multiple locations including Montréal, Canada; Miami, Florida; Havana, Cuba; Paris, France; Brooklyn, New York, and Northern California. Nwokocha has been featured in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Harvard Divinity Bulletin Magazine, Reading Religion, and Women Studies Quarterly.

You’re listening to Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast dedicated to books and ideas generated from and about the Atlantic world. In collaboration with the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, these conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.

Today’s discussion is with Drew Dalton, who teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Dominican University in Chicago, Illinois where he currently serves as chair of the department. He is the author of numerous articles in European philosophy, literature, cultural studies, and phenomenology, as well as three authored books: Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire, published in 2009 by Duquesne University Press, The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute with Bloomsbury in 2018, and the just out book The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Reason to Ethical Pessimism with Northwestern University Press, which is the occasion for our conversation today. In this discussion, we explore the relationship between material science and metaphysics, the relation between metaphysics and ethical sensibility, as well as the place of pessimism in our ethical, existential, and political thinking. A link to the online essay mentioned at the close of the podcast is here: "The Beautiful Pessimism of Jimmy Buffett" in The Conversation.

This discussion is with Dr. Isaac Joslin who holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota in Francophone Studies. Currently Assistant Professor of Francophone Studies and Global Futures Scholar at Arizona State University, he has travelled extensively for research in Francophone Africa in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Togo, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, and Burundi. His research interests include Postcolonial Francophone African literatures and cinemas, aesthetics and theories of representation, theories of cultural hybridity, ecocriticism, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, as well as pedagogical approaches for teaching African literatures and cultures. He has published scholarly articles on African literature and culture in the International Journal of Francophone Studies, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, African Literature Today, The French Review, Critical African Studies, Nouvelles Études Francophones, Oeuvres et Critiques, and others. His first monograph from Ohio University Press (April 2023) is entitled, Afrofuturisms: Ecology, Humanity, and Francophone Cultural Expressions.

Today’s discussion is with Dr. Tina Post, an Assistant Professor of English and Theater and Performance at the University of Chicago. Her recent first monograph, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression, is the first book in NYU Press’s new Minoritarian Aesthetics series. Her scholarly articles have appeared in Modern Drama, TDR: The Drama Review, International Review of African American Art (IRAAA), ASAP/Journal, and the edited collection Race and Performance after Repetition (Duke University Press, 2020). Dr.Post’s creative work can be found in Imagined Theaters, Stone Canoe, and The Appendix. In today’s discussion, we discuss Deadpan, where Dr.Post reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive. 

Today’s discussion is with Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad, she is the author of Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). She is the Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she teaches classes on Buddhism and social justice. She formerly taught classes in philosophy and social theory, and directed the Peace and Justice Studies program, at Warren Wilson College. In addition to teaching classes on Buddhism in the U.S. context, she writes and teaches on mass incarceration. For several years she directed the Inside Out Prison Education Program, a partnership between Warren Wilson College and the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women. In this discussion we explore her latest monograph, Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition:The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (New York University Press, 2022). Dr. Vesely-Flad Black Buddhist teachers’ insights into Buddhist wisdom, and how they align Buddhism with Black radical teachings, helping to pull Buddhism away from dominant white cultural norms. You can learn more about her work on her website BuddhismandBlackVoices.com

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, as well as a co-director of the “From Slavery to Freedom” (FS2F) Franklin Humanities Lab. A scholar of black cultural production and visual representation, Cobb is the author of two monographs, Picture Freedom:  Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015) and New Growth:  The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke UP 2022). She is the editor for African American Literature in Transition, 1800-1830 (Cambridge UP 2021) and she has written essays for Public Culture, MELUS:  Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, and American Literary History. In this conversation, we discuss her latest monograph, New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair reveals the various ways that people of African descent forge new relationships to the body, public space, and visual culture through the embrace of Black hair.