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 Jared Ball, who teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at Morgan State University. He is the author of a number of scholarly and public facing essays as well as the book The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power (2023). He also hosts the series I Mix What I Like!, which conducts critical conversations on key issues in African American and African diasporic life. In this podcasted discussion, we explore the politics of Black Studies, the past and future of the study of Black life, and what kinds of commitments hold the best promise for the future of the field.