What is Left of Black?

Black Studies for a Mobile Digital Network

Left of Black is the Webby Awards-nominated web series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars and artists created and hosted by James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Mark Anthony Neal.

The series is produced at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University.

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Winner of the Gold 2024 Davey Awards

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Dive into the Digital Archive

Season 15

Episode 2 | Lamont Jones on the Card Game from Black Culture: BID WHIST!

Have you ever played a game of Bid Whist before? Is it like playing spades or is there a significant difference? Author Lamont Jones, a lawyer in the professional boxing…

Season 15

Episode 1 | Author Aaron Robertson on The Black Utopians

What does it look like to not only survive, but to thrive, in a society that surrounds you and your community with hostility and detriment? For many, this is the…

Season 14

Episode 19 | Poet Camille Dungy on a Black Mother’s Garden in a White Neighborhood

When African American poet Camille Dungy decided to move her family to the predominantly White community of Fort Collins, CO, she did not expect to embark on a seven-year journey…

Season 14

Episode 18 | Small Talk at FHI with Scholar Bakari Kitwana on Hip-Hop at 50!

A random back-to-school party in 1973 Brooklyn, New York ended up being ground zero for the birth of hip-hop culture at the electrifying fingertips of 18-year old local legend, DJ…

Season 14

Episode 17 | Dr. Orisanmi Burton on the Long Attica Revolt & Prisons as an Ongoing Site of War

Living conditions for incarcerated people in upstate New York’s Attica Correctional Facility were nothing short of dehumanizing. Black inmates were especially brutalized by the nearly all-white guard staff who were…

Season 14

Episode 16 | Black Vaudeville in Jazz-Age America with Dr. Michelle R. Scott

The Theater Owners’ Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., a theater network that employed Black entertainers to perform for African American audiences across the country, was a key player when vaudeville was…