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 Stephanie Sparling Williams, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Her curatorial practice is predicated on interdisciplinary research, writing, and teaching on American art, and foregrounds Black Feminist space-making. She is the author of Speaking Out of Turn: Lorraine O'Grady and the Art of Language from 2021 and Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, forthcoming in 2025. Her scholarly work is invested in the space of the museum, with a focus on African American art and culture, and the work of U.S.-based artists of color, as well as material histories, cross cultural exchange, strategies of address, and contemporary art that engages with the history of the United States. In this conversation, we discuss the transformative work of Black study and Black Studies, the museum as community and political space, and the place of beauty and joy in thinking about Black life.

(Photo credit: Hector René Membreño-Canales)