We're back for the third season of BlackTalk, and we are excited to kick off with Professor Rinaldo Walcott!

Dr. Walcott is Professor and Chair in the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo; there he is also the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. Rinaldo’s research focuses on the cultural expression of Black life with an interest in the transnational, diasporic, and the national crosscurrents of Black creativities. Rinaldo is the author of a number of single-authored, co-authored, and co-edited books. His more recent work is The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (Duke, 2021) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis, 2021) which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2021. Currently, Rinaldo is working on two monographs, one on freedom and the sea, and another on Black queer expressive culture. A third work seeks to grapple with the possibilities of achieving utopia from the grips of the catastrophe that threatens to consume all of planetary life. Rinaldo was born in Barbados. He divides his time between the city of Buffalo and the city of Toronto.

In this episode, Rinaldo speaks about what it means to decolonize a curriculum, campus, and country. He also examines the role of Black studies in our broader community and unpacks the meaning of “diaspora,” the “myth of multiculturalism,” and the Black Canadian experience.

https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/africana-and-american-studies/faculty/faculty-directory/walcott-rinaldo.html

https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-long-emancipation

https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/non-fiction/cultural-criticism/on-property/