Today’s conversation is with Courtney Baker, who teaches in the Department of English at University of California, Riverside. Along with numerous articles in public and scholarly venues on art and the aesthetic, she is the author of Humane Insight: Looking at Images of African-American Suffering and Death (2015). In a previous position, she was the co-founder and Chair of the Department of Black Studies at Occidental College. In this conversation, we discuss the place of art and aesthetic inquiry in Black Studies, the role of tradition in building knowledge in Black study, and the significance of the field for Black liberation struggle.