Today’s conversation is with Zahra Caldwell, who teaches in the Department of Ethnic and Gender Studies Department at Westfield State University. She is an interdisciplinary cultural historian who teaches in the fields of History, Black Studies, and Women’s Studies. Her professional, community, and academic work is focused on unpacking and expanding the definition of resistance within the long struggle for African American freedom, particularly regarding African American women, artistic labor, and inventive activism. Her research includes African American women’s history, the cultural labor of African Americans and women, and twentieth-century Black radicalism. She has published work on Black cultural luminaries such as Hazel Scott, Prince, Elizabeth Catlett, and Beyoncé. She is the author of “The Fiercest Kind: Five Black Women in Art, Performance, and Resistance 1937-1965” (UMass Press, 2026), which looks at the contributions and challenges of Black women activist-artists in the mid 20th century.