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 Mari Crabtree, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Emerson College in the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies. She is the author of My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching (2022) and is currently working on two book-length projects: Co-Opted: Essays on Black Studies and Ethical Praxis in the Age of Neoliberalism and Guile: The Pleasures and Political Utility of Subversion in the African American Cultural Tradition. In this conversation, we discuss how Black Studies informs her conception of writing history, the place of politics and culture in the field, and how Black Studies sensibilities shape thinking, pedagogy, and everyday practice.

This is Ashley Newby 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 Carleen Carey, a public educator with over 15 years of experience across K-12 and higher education sectors. Before founding Akoma Leadership Consulting, she served as Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Director of Public Outreach and Equity, College and Career Readiness Manager, and Instructor of Record for government, non-profit, and higher education organizations. In these roles, she led a portfolio of programs including Hidden Histories, EEOC Training Corner, Women’s Leadership Lunch, and Community Coalition. In the K-12 sector, Dr. Carey led the transition to remote education for Career and Technical Education teachers through professional workshops such as Race and Ability in the CTE Classroom, Tech Tune-Ups for CTE Teachers, and Digital Download: Connecting Students with Careers. She also taught Human Diversity, Power, and Opportunity in the Teacher Certification program at Michigan State University. Carey currently teaches "African American Authors from 1700-1900," "African-American Authors from 1900-present," and early American Literature at the University of Maryland Global Campus.

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 Darius Spearman, who teaches in the program in Black Studies at San Diego City College. He is the author of two books, Between the Color Lines: A History of African Americans on the California Frontier from 1769 through Reconstruction (2015) and Legacy of Survival: The Dynamics of the Black Family (2025), as well as two edited volumes under the title Reclaiming Our Stories (2020 and 2021). In this conversation, we discuss the place of region and historical experience in the study of Black life, the critical relationship between ethnic studies and Black Studies, and how commitment to community shifts the meaning of pedagogy and the classroom.