Zora's Daughters

Today we're talking about the quintessential anthropological experience: fieldwork! We heeded your requests to do more casual episodes, so we're answering questions about what the field is, what it's like to go to the field, and other tips we have.

We start out with Zora Neale Hurston's imagery of culture as a tight chemise and the spy-glass of anthropology. We discuss how we got to our research projects; how we define the field; ethnographies that inspired our fieldwork; tips, strategies and resources for getting through the difficult parts of field work; doing field work in the pandemic and the future of field work; maintaining boundaries; and what our next research project would be. Plus a little moment where the field and the podcast collide! 

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Discussed in this Episode

Dear Graduate Student... (Ashanté Reese, 2019)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 202 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

Happy Birthday to our wonderful co-host Alyssa! We're back for our second episode of the semester to talk about hegemony, institutional power, and the academic hierarchies that fail to protect Black queer and trans women.

What's the Word? Hegemony. We give a brief explanation of hegemony and how it comes into being.

What We're Reading “Black Lesbians—Who Will Fight for Our Lives but Us?”: Navigating Power, Belonging, Labor, Resistance, and Graduate Student Survival in the Ivory Tower by S. Tay Glover. We discuss our experiences with pedagogies of accommodation (Chandra Mohanty) and being feminist killjoys and willful subjects (Sara Ahmed) in our department, being disposable randoms of the political economy of the academy, and resisting respectability politics and our impossibility through silence and self-love.

What in the World?! We discuss the controversy surrounding Harvard anthropology professor John Comaroff, the way universities are "protected enclosures of unchecked violence and abuse of power," why anthropology is often at the center of academic controversies, and how Title IX regulations are designed to protect the university and break the will of victims and survivors.

Looking for Title IX information? Visit KnowYourIX.org

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Discussed in this Episode

“Black Lesbians—Who Will Fight for Our Lives but Us?”: Navigating Power, Belonging, Labor, Resistance, and Graduate Student Survival in the Ivory Tower (S. Tay Glover, 2017)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 202 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

There wouldn't be a fabric of the nation if Black Americans hadn't picked the cotton for it! Brendane and Alyssa are back for Semester 2 with announcement of all the big things we've been talking about and getting into decolonization, history and national myths with The 1619 Project, banning books, racial constructs, and whether we really need Black History Month.

What's the Word? Decolonization. We explain the difference between colonialism and imperialism as well decolonization and decoloniality.

What We're Reading. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones. We discuss her contribution to understanding history and historiography and writing the contributions of enslaved Black Americans and their descendants into U.S. history and memory, how it's become the center of "diaspora wars" and "POC wars," the lag between scholarly knowledge and mainstream knowledge, and the project's choice of language around the system of slavery.

What in the World?! In this segment, we ask whether we really need Black History Month, the wave of banning books by and about Black, queer, and people of color AKA further under-educating and underserving Black and brown children, fragile white men's ideas about how to "combat" the teaching of critical race theory in schools (which we posit they take literally to mean 'ideas the criticize white people'), and Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan talking about what they think race is.

Check out our graphic designer, Whitney Ingram! (website Instagram)

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Discussed in this Episode

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (Nikole Hannah-Jones, 2021)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 202 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

We're giving you notes from the shoal! In our last episode of the semester, Alyssa and Brendane are joined by the brilliant Amber Starks AKA Melanin Mvskoke to talk about blackness, indigeneity, the im/possibility of solidarity, and so much more!

What's the Word? Praxis. A commonly used (and perhaps abused!) term in conversations around activism and solidarity that we historicize and define as ethical and accountable action.

What We're Reading. “Every Day We Must Get Up and Relearn the World,” an Interview with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In this interview, Maynard and Simpson discuss their process of writing letters back and forth during the early days of pandemic and how that pushed them read and deepen their thinking on what it means to get free, which they call a politics and praxis of rehearsal. Throughout the interview, they reflect on topics like the violence of normality, the politics of recognition and respectability, the issue with apocalyptic rhetoric, disrupting linear temporality, the way state violence is inherently gendered, among others.

What in the World?! In this segment, we have Amber Starks AKA Melanin Mvskoke to discuss enculturation, the hypervisibility of blackness and hyperinvisibility of indigeneity, that "Land Back" does not mean an eviction notice, the ways we can think Black liberation and Native sovereignty together and in community, that the land recognizes the indigeneity of African descendants, and how Black folks risk participating in Native erasure. We also discuss the accusations of anti-indigeneity against Black anthropologists and the piggybacking of other causes onto Black people's and why Brendane does not believe in solidarity.

Follow Amber on Twitter and Instagram!

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Discussed in this episode:

Every Day We Must Get Up and Relearn the World (Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Hannah Voegele, Chris Griffin, 2021)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

Who are these new folx on the block?! In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa are talking about gentrification, blackness, mambo sauce, and the new show Harlem (2021) on Amazon Prime that has Blackademic Twitter abuzz. There are definitely spoilers in this episode!

What's the Word? Gentrification. We explain the term, its origins, and the causes and effects of gentrification on those who are displaced.

What We're Reading. "'D.C. is mambo sauce': Black cultural production in a gentrifying city" by Ashanté M. Reese. This essay centers mambo sauce as the object of observation* to examine larger tensions related to race, class, and power in the city. Both Brendane and Alyssa have Capital City Co mambo sauce in their fridges, speaking to the way materials associated with Blackness is appropriated, commodified, and circulated. We discuss the way these materials of belonging for Black people become markers of authenticity at the same time Black people are being pushed out of their neighborhoods.

What In the World?! We ask why are they gentrifying oxtail, and discuss the new TV series Harlem (2021), directed by Malcolm D. Lee that features four Black women navigating life and love in the city. We discuss the trap of representation, the in/accurate portrayal of our department, and the ways Black women are often forced to sacrifice something for success. We also discuss the census and the way population dynamics have shifted in the neighborhood in the past decade.

Columbia University Student Worker Strike Fund

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Health Effects of Gentrification (CDC, 2015)

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

We're back y'all! Thank you for accommodating our much needed break. In return, we're giving you one: no readings! In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa debrief on the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association that was held in Baltimore from November 17-21, 2021. We kiki and spill tea on what we expected from the conference (Alyssa's first!), our favorite moments and panels, our desired professorial aesthetics, and which professors were doing the wobble at the Association of Black Anthropologists' 50th anniversary reception. In true ZD fashion, we distinguish between critique and anti-blackness in demands for solidarity - in sum: Black folks aren't carrying you across the bridge to liberation.

In the second part of the episode, we discuss conference do's and don'ts, particularly around cultivating mentors, how you spend your time, and not feeling pressured to present early in your program or career.

Finally, it was such a pleasure meeting everyone IRL and having the opportunity to share space and ideas with you. Our hearts are full!

Liked what you heard? Donate here!

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

Call my girls and put 'em all on a spaceship! In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane are joined by the co-hosts of the amazing Lose Your Sister podcast, Jordan and Liberty. Together, we unpack Black feminist futurity and temporality, the end of the/this world, community, and Squid Game (no spoilers, promise!).

What's the Word? Futurity. We explain what people mean by futurity, how in the Black feminist tradition futurity is created through visionary work and radical speculation, and why humans are always living in the past.

What We're Reading. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. We're joined by Liberty and Jordan of the Lose Your Sister podcast to discuss age in our "apocacryptic" world and adultification of Black girls, whether Butler is "clairvoyant" or simply sees clearly, the recursivity of the past and time, and the importance of building community with more in common than shared pain.

What In the World?! Together we discuss the ways we're closer to Butler's Parable world than we think: billion shellfish that cooked in the ocean, supply chain and labor shortages and the WI senate bill that will allow under-16s to work until 11pm, housing scarcity, and the anti-capitalist? parable Squid Games.

Follow Lose Your Sister on Twitter and Instagram! Their podcast episodes are available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts. Check out their Learning Preserves and episode reading lists here.

Liked what you heard? Donate here!

Discussed this week: 

Parable of the Sower (Octavia E. Butler, 1993)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

We're reimagining Black feminism and fugitivity, y'all! In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane are joined by graduate student and educator Naomi Simmons-Thorne. Together, they unpack fugitivity, bridging the bifurcation in Black feminist theory, the attack on CRT, fugitive pedagogy, and and COVID in the classroom.

What's the Word? Fugitivity. We discuss the development of fugitivity and debate who and how people can practice fugitivity.

What We're Reading. "Black Feminist Theory and its Wayward Futures" by Naomi Simmons-Thorne. We're joined by Naomi to discuss her paper where she maps the relationship between the divergent Black feminist paradigms and offers a bridge that tells us we don't have to choose.

What In the World?! Together we discuss the attack on critical race theory and what we're actually witnessing: fighting against antiracism and critical consciousness in education, fugitive pedagogy and Brendane's experiences as a science teacher to low income Black and brown students, and how the state is sacrificing children for the sake of the profits of the few.

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Discussed this week:

"Black Feminist Theory and its Wayward Futures"  (Naomi Simmons-Thorne, forthcoming)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

We may have left the plantation, but the plantation never left us! In this episode Brendane and Alyssa unpack afterlives, the plantation, futurity, and the singularity that continues to shape the present: slavery. In our introduction we take a moment to remember the late Dr. Steven Gregory, Professor of Anthropology and the inaugural Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

What's The Word? Afterlife. Through the work of Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, we give a brief overview of what people mean when they talk about the "afterlives" of slavery (or other systems or structures).

What We're Reading Plantation Futures by Katherine McKittrick. Both of the Daughters had this essay on their exam lists so it was a treat to read! We discuss the ways the plantation is still with us, simultaneously holding the history of racial violence and the key to possibilities for Black life, the co-construction of place and identity, the plot and the plantation, and other kinds of afterlives.

What In the World?! Critiquing the Plantationocene, Border Patrol and Black Asylum Seekers, Missing White Women Syndrome. We talk about how the attention to multispecies and regionalization of the plantation flattens difference and erases Black feminist studies of the plantation, the attention to the object (the whip) and the event (border patrol chasing asylum seekers) serve to distract us from the deeper historical and political pattern, and a brief foray into Missing White Women Syndrome.

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Discussed this week:

Plantation Futures (Katherine McKittrick, 2013)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.

In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane unpack questions of fatphobia, anti-blackness, and how that intersects with the discursive. For What's the Word?, we discuss discourse to understand how understandings of the world circulate, of course referencing one of our fave French philosophers: Michel Foucault. Today, we read the essay "Fat, Black, and Ugly: The Semiotic Production of Prodigious Femininities" (2021) by Professor Krystal A. Smalls, which explores several ways fatness and Blackness are discursively constructed as social comorbidities for feminine people and examines how this discourse affects lived experience. Through this lens, we talk about how fatness was wielded against Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Ma'Khia Bryant. In What In the World?! we discuss the latest scandal involving the teen clothing brand Brandy Melville and accusations of anti-blackness and fatphobia, unpack why these -phobias are not specifically about fear (except maybe psychoanalytically!), bias against fat people in the medical system including our own experiences, why commenting on people's bodies is not "caring" for them, Lizzo living her best life, and how loving ourselves and our bodies is a journey.

If you’ve experienced weight bias in health care and in other contexts can complete the Weight Bias Reporting Form created by the Obesity Action Coalition.

CW: Throughout the episode we discuss body image issues and bias against fat bodies. Please take care of yourself as you need while listening.

Liked what you heard? Donate here!

Discussed this week:

Fat, Black, and Ugly: The Semiotic Production of Prodigious Femininities (Krystal A. Smalls, 2021)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

Let us know what you thought of the episode @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter!

Transcript will be available on our website here.