What does it mean to be Black and punk? How does this intersection impact how African American youth express themselves while confronted with the expectations of society and community? G’Ra Asim, assistant professor of creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and a punk rocker, joins Left of Black host and Duke University Professor […]
What is the deep cultural and intellectual work taking place in the sounds of Black feminist musical icons from Bessie Smith to Zora Neale Hurston to Beyoncé? For his episode of Left of Black, host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Dr. Daphne A. Brooks who is the William R. Kenan, […]
Can the utopian model that is a common theme in science and speculative fiction also be a new way for Black people to rethink how to exist in a world where their humanity is always called into question? Can the utopian model that is a common theme in science and speculative fiction also be a […]
Nat Turner, a preacher and slave in Southhampton County, VA, organized a small group of loyal followers and mounted a terrific and terrorizing rebellion against the plantation system, killing around 60 white people as they plowed their way to a nearby armory. The insurrection was quelled by the state militia, eventually leading to Turner’s trial […]
When you look at the U.S. Virgin Islands, you may think of it as a getaway destination. However, this largely impoverished Black island U.S. territory has fallen prey to financial services companies like the Economic Development Commission (EDC) that reinforce a near-identical hierarchy to that of the colonial past where race, gender, and class effectuate […]
How are African Americans socialized in this society that redefines age, and by extension childhood, for those of enslaved descent? Black children are brutalized by a criminal justice system that does not see them as “children,” while fully-grown mature Black men were historically called “boy” by their Caucasian counterparts. Are the attempts at un-aging, and […]
Dr. Moya Bailey, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, was the first to pen the term “misogynoir” in 2010 as a means of giving a name to the anti-Black misogyny that she observed on the web and in broader society. Yet Black women have always found ways to push back […]
We may think of the Civil Rights Era as having a certain end date somewhere in the early to mid-1970’s. However Black women have never left the battlefield in the fight for civil & human rights against a patriarchal system bent on silencing Black voices. This week on Left of Black, Dr. Mark Anthony Neal […]
Heralded as the father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson also fostered a continuously subversive practice of teaching and networking as a way to build educational capacity for Black students emerging into the era of Jim Crow and the Great Migration. Harvard University Professor Jarvis R. Givens, spoke with Left of Black host and […]
Nellie Y. McKay, a champion for Black women’s voices in modern literature, was also a scholar with an extraordinary path to academia in the late 60’s, early 70’s. Many personal details of her life were not known until after her passing away in 2006, even to some of her closest colleagues. McKay rewrote the narrative […]