The Black Studies Podcast began in 2024 as a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field, ongoing as a project dedicated to building an audio archive of diverse perspectives in and on Black Studies. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars – senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers – in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.
Created by Ashley Newby and John E. Drabinski in the Department of Africana Studies at University of Maryland, the editorial collective now includes Brie Gorrell (doctoral candidate in English at University of Maryland) and Olivia Blucker (doctoral candidate in Anthropology at University of Maryland).
The Past and Future of Black Studies 