This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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 Benjamin Talton, Executive Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and Professor in the Department of History at Howard University. He is an historian who researches and writes about culture and politics in Africa and the African diaspora. He earned his BA in history at Howard University and his doctorate, also in history, at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Howard, Talton was Professor of History at Temple University. He has also taught African History at Hofstra University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. 

A highly respected author, Talton has published three books: The Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality (Palgrave 2010); Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing (Palgrave 2011), which he co-edited with Dr. Quincy Mills of the University of Maryland; and, most recently, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Penn Press 2019), which won the 2020 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association. Among his current projects is co-editing Volume III of the Cambridge History of the African Diaspora, with Monique Bedasse and Nemata Blyden, and, chief-editor of all three of the series’ volumes, Michael Gomez. Talton’s work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and popular media outlets, including The Washington Post, Jacobin, Current History, the Journal of Asian and African Studies, The African Studies Review, The Conversation, Ghana Studies, and Africa Is A Country. 

Talton serves on the editorial board of the American Historical Review, the leading History academic journal. He is a former editor of African Studies Review, the leading North American peer-reviewed African Studies journal, and serves on the advisory board for New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). Dr. Talton is a past president of the Ghana Studies Association and a former member of the executive board for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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, graduate 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 Mali Collins, who teaches in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University. Along with numerous scholarly and public pieces, she is the author of Scrap Theory: Reproductive Injustice in the Black Feminist Imagination (2024) and is a practicing birth, postpartum, and pregnancy termination doula, and a trained Perinatal and Infant Loss advocate with The Womb Room in Baltimore, MD. In this conversation, we discuss the intersection of race, gender, and questions of reproduction and its transformative effect for the study of Black life. 

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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, graduate 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 Theodore A. Harris, a Philadelphia-based artist and writer. Along with numerous exhibits of his multi-media artwork linked via his website, he is the author of Thesentür: Conscientious Objector to Formalism, and co-author of two books with Amiri Baraka Our Flesh of Flames (Anvil Arts Press) and Malcolm X as Ideology (LeBow Books), a book with Fred Moten: i ran from it and was still in it (Cusp Books); and TRIPTYCH: Text by Amiri Baraka and Jack Hirschman (Caza de Poesía).In this conversation, we discuss the history of Black expressive culture, the importance of art for understanding Black life, and the meaning of creativity in politically fraught times. 

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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.

Michael Simanga is an activist writer, multi-disciplinary artist and educator and came of age during the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement as a student organizer and poet in his hometown of Detroit. He was active in the Congress of African People, the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Black Assembly, the anti-apartheid movement, the labor movement and the independent schools movement. As a cultural worker he has focused on building and supporting community based cultural institutions and has spent his adult life as an advocate of art and culture as an instrument of social change and development. He is the former Executive Director of the National Black Arts Festival; former director of Fulton County Arts and Culture and the Southwest Arts Center. Professor Simanga earned an undergraduate degree in History from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and a Ph.D. in African American Studies from the Union Institute and University of Cincinnati.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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, graduate 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 Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, who teaches in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at Rutgers University, Newark. Along with numerous scholarly and public facing articles, Laylah is currently co-organizing To Collect and Collate: Keepers of Black Photography, a convening on Black photography archives to be held at NYU Accra in March 2026. Her exhibition, Ground of Memory is on view at Express Newark, Rutgers University - Newark until January 30, 2026 and she is working on a book of first person essays on Black photographers. In this conversation, we discuss curatorial work, photography, and the centrality of aesthetic questions in the Black Studies imagination and intellectual tradition.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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 Rahman A. Culver, an educator and activist who works to support measurable, lasting social change. Culver earned his B.A. in Afro-American Studies from University of Maryland in 2001, working to found and serving as director of the Saturday Freedom School program. He is certified in secondary and special education, holding a Master's degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. Culver has worked as an educator in the Montgomery County and Prince George's County public school systems.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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 Marion Orr, the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University. He previously was a member of the political science faculty at Duke University. Professor Orr earned his B.A. degree in political science from Savannah State College, M.A. in political science from Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta University), and a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park. From 2008-2014, Professor Orr served as Director of the Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. He is a former chair of Brown's Department of Political Science and a former director of Brown's Urban Studies Program. Professor Orr's expertise is in the area of American politics. He specializes in urban politics, race and ethnic politics, and African-American politics. He is the author and editor of eight books. His book, House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (University of North Carolina Press, 2025), is the first biography of Michigan's first Black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Among Professor Orr's other books, Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore (University Press of Kansas), won the Policy Studies Organization's Aaron Wildavsky Award and his co-authored, The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics and the Challenge of Urban Education (Princeton University Press), was named the best book by the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Urban Politics Section. He is the coeditor (with Domingo Morel) of Latino Mayors: Political Change in the Postindustrial City. He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles, essays, and reviews.

In 2019, Professor Orr was awarded the APSA's Hanes Walton, Jr. Career Award that honors a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to our understanding of racial and ethnic politics. Professor Orr is the recipient of Biographers International Organization Francis "Frank" Rollin Fellowship. He has also held a research fellowship at the Brookings Institution, a Presidential Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, and a fellowship from the Ford Foundation. Professor Orr served as President of the APSA's Organized Section on Urban Politics and as Chair of the Governing Board of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA), an international organization devoted to the study of urban issues. Dr. Orr has also served as a member of the executive councils of the American Political Science Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. He has served, or is currently serving, on the editorial boards of the National Political Science Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, and Urban Affairs Review.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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, graduate 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 Irvin Hunt, who teaches in the Departments of English and African American Studies at University of Illinois. He is the author of Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement, which won Honorable Mention in the William Scarborough Sanders Prize competition in 2023, and he is at work on two books, a study of contemporary Black poetry titled A New Language for Grief and another titled I Can't Make You Speak: Stories. He is also co-writer of the script for Khalil Joseph's film BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions. In this conversation, we discuss the critical Black literary tradition, horizons of expressive culture, and the politics of thinking and doing Black Studies in the contemporary moment. 

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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 Jeanine Staples-Dixon, a Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State's Colleges of Education and Liberal Arts. She also serves as Senior Faculty Mentor for the university, through the Office of Educational Equity. A long-time leader in Critical New Literacies Studies and teacher education, she's currently writing her two forthcoming books, Extraordinary Pedagogies: An Endarkened Feminist Approach To Revolutionizing Teacher Consciousness (Teachers College Press, 2024) and Extraordinary Literacies: Regarding the Literate Lives of Black Girls and Women In Schools & Society (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026). She teaches LLED 580, CI 590, and CI 501 for Penn State's World Campus. Her website is: https://jeaninestaples.com

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a 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 Allison A. Waite, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. She has worked on a number of films and has produced, written, and directed a number of pieces including The Dope Years, a documentary on the life and death of Latasha Harlins. In this conversation, we discuss the political significance of art as a facilitator of empathy, the importance of authenticity and voice in Black art making, and the responsibilities of creatives and writers in relation to community.