This is the finale episode of season 6. In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses women of color in the academy with Drs. Zaneta Rago-Craft and Nicole Pulliam. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University and Rago-Craft is the inaugural director of the Intercultural Center at Monmouth. Pulliam is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Counseling and Leadership as well as the founding director of the Social Justice Academy at Monmouth University. These two women are campus leaders with a wealth of experience in their fields and higher education administration more broadly. Their discussion of the issues, struggles, and obstacles faced by women of color in academia including some discussion of self-care is insightful. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black athletes, political protest, and social justice with Shaun M. Anderson. Williams is an Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University located in West Long Branch, New Jersey and Anderson is Associate Professor of Organizational Communication at Loyola Marymount University and the founder of CSR Global Consulting LLC, a firm dedicated to helping sport organizations develop strategic plans to effectively communicate their corporate social responsibility efforts. Anderson has become a major voice in the conversation regarding sport and social change and his work has been featured in several media outlets including in The Huffington Post, Black Enterprise Magazine and the Washington Times.  

Season 6, Episode 9

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses the broomstick wedding ritual with Tyler D. Parry. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University located in West Long Branch, New Jersey and Parry is Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies. Parry’s research focuses on slavery in the Americas, cultures in the African Diaspora, the historical memory of slavery in the Americas, cultures in the African Diaspora and historical memory. This conversation is about his first book Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of A Black Wedding Ritual published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. In this fascinating history of the broomstick wedding ritual, Parry traverses a series of cultures including African Diaspora communities to trace the long history of this ritual that has become important in the history of African American life. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses the origins and impact of hip hop with Anwar Uhuru as part of a series of episodes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Uhuru is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies and an affiliate faculty member with the departments of Philosophy and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Their research focuses on human value based on race, gender, sexuality, and ableism with publicans in the Journal of Hip Hop Studies, The APA Newsletter, Philosophy and the Black Experience, and Radical Philosophy Review. They are also known for teaching popular courses at Wayne State on Black Detroit and Politics and Culture in Anglophone Caribbean. Uhuru is a frequent guest on the show as a rising public intellectual and scholar who has a wide range of expertise on subjects related to race, gender, sexuality, and culture. 

In this episode Hettie V. Williams discusses the African Presence in Latin America with Luis Mora-Ballesteros. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University. Mora-Ballesteros is Lecturer of Spanish and Literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Monmouth University. This conversation focuses primarily on the African influences on Latin American dance, literature, and culture including some discussion on how these influences also represent connections to the afterlives of slavery. This is particularly evident in the song, dance, and music culture of the African descended communities of Latin America and the Caribbean.   

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses the Golden Age of Hip Hop in the 1980s and 1990s with Professor Claude Taylor. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University. Taylor is Director for Academic Transition and Inclusion and Professor of communication and media at Monmouth University. Taylor also works with the First To Fly program at Monmouth that focuses on the development and support of first generation college students. He is a popular professor and his area of teaching interests include race, rhetoric, and discourse. This episode is one of a series of episodes this season to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop now a global phenomenon. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Haiti and Black internationalism with Leslie M. Alexander. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University. Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of history at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of several essays, articles, book chapters, and books about the African Diaspora including her latest text Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States recently published by the University of Illinois Press. The groundbreaking text is the subject of our conversation as Alexander elaborate on the centrality of Haiti to Black consciousness and Black activism across the African Diaspora in the nineteenth century.  

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black in graduate school with Lauren T. Rorie. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Rorie is currently an adjunct professor in the perspectives program at Monmouth. She discusses her experiences as a Black student at the undergraduate and graduate level and provides Black graduate students with advice on how to navigate PWIs as graduate students or part time instructors in their post graduate life. Rorie has recently been accepted into several prestigious graduate programs in history.  

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses the Black Church in film and television with Dr. Anwar Uhuru. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Uhuru is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies and an affiliate faculty member with the departments of Philosophy and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Their research focuses on human value based on race, gender, sexuality, and ableism with publicans in the Journal of Hip Hop Studies, The APA Newsletter, Philosophy and the Black Experience, and Radical Philosophy Review. They are also known for teaching popular courses at Wayne State on Black Detroit and Politics and Culture in Anglophone Caribbean. In this episode, they discuss with Williams the satire Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul a recent film by Monkeypaw Productions and executive producer Jordan Peele directed by Adamma Ebo. They also discuss the Black Church in film and tv more generally in this episode. This film about the Black megachurch culture in the American South is currently viewable on Netflix. 

In this episode Hettie V. Williams discusses mentoring and the African/African American experience with Julius O. Adekunle. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Adekunle is Professor of African history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University. Adekunle is the author/editor of several books including Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern African Diaspora, Religion in Politics: Secularism and National Integration in Modern Nigeria, and Culture and Customs of Rwanda. His area of teaching/research is religion and culture in Nigeria with a focus on the Colonial Era and the twentieth century. He has also written enumerable essays, book chapters, reviews and commentaries for various academic journals and other academic outlets. Julius also teaches a variety of courses on the African experience at Monmouth including the History of Africa, Nationalism in Africa, and Colonialism in Africa. He is a much-loved teacher professor and friend to many at Monmouth and beyond.