Season 8

Episode 24: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C.

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by scholar and author Treva Blaine Lindsey Author of Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (University of Illinois Press, 2017), which noted Historian Martha S. Jones describes as “Fresh research, illuminated by feminist theory” that “reveals how ‘New Negro Womanhood’ became a framework […]

Episode 23 | Black Women and the Pursuit of Happiness

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Bianca Williams Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism (Duke University Press, 2018), which noted anthropologist A. Lynn Bolles describes as a “novel and innovative ethnography” that “pushes the boundaries of what anthropology can be considered […]

Episode 22 | Filmmaker John Akomfrah and the ‘Precarity’ of Black Genius 

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by filmmaker John Akomfrah, A founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside his longtime collaborators David Lawson and Lina Gopaul; the trio later founded Smoking Dogs Films. Akomfrah’s groundbreaking film The Last Angel in […]

Episode 21 | White Fantasies of Race and Empathy

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by scholar and author Alisha Gaines, Author of Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy (UNC Press, 2017), which Jonathan Holloway describes as “nuanced examination of the many complicated layers that inform the ‘Black experience.” Gaines, who is Associate Professor of English at […]

Episode 20 | Fugitive Science, Black Freedom and Early African AmericanCulture

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by scholar and author Britt Rusert Author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press), which Alondra Nelson has called “Groundbreaking Interdisciplinary Scholarship.”  Rusert is Associate Professor of African American Studies in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of […]

Episode 19 | “No News Is Good News” – A Conversation with Phonte Coleman

A founding member of Little Brother, the lead vocalist of Foreign Exchange and an artists in his own right Phonte Coleman joins Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal in the Left of Black Studio. Phonte discusses his new album No New is Good News, which address issues of aging and mortality, and talks about the […]

Episode 5 | Michaela angela Davis on Image + Beauty + Power

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in studio by image activist, Michaela Angela Davis For a free-ranging conversation about Black women, beauty and representation Davis is the creator of MADFREE: Liberating Conversations About Image Beauty and Power, a multi-platform conversation project with revolutionary women. A frequent contributor to CNN, Davis has served […]

Advance Reader’s Copy. Pub date: 11/14/17. With Barbara Smith. Beverly Smith. Demita Frazier. Alicia Garza. Barbara Ransby. Haymarket Books.

Episode 4 | Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance

On this episode of Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal sits down with Professor Uri McMillan to discuss his recent book   Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance, NYU Press. McMillan is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles with joint appointments in the Departments of […]

Page Proofs. Duke Press. Feb ‘18 pub date. Interested reviewers for NBB (in Exile) hit me via email.