Today’s conversation is with Stephanie Shonekan, who is Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at University of Maryland, where she is also affiliate faculty in the Department of African American and Africana Studies. She is the author of a number of critical essays on music and the Black Studies tradition, with particular focus on the relationship between expressive culture and identity, and is the author of Soul, Country, and the USA: Race and Identity in American Music Culture (2015), Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Sorrow Tears and Blood (2025), and Race and the American Story, co-authored with Adam Seagrave in 2024. In this conversation, we discuss the place of musicological research in the field, the importance of transnational studies, and the challenges for Black Studies in higher-ed’s contemporary cultural and political moment.