Princeton AAS Podcast S2 E04 University Reckonings Over the past decade, historians have probed the relationship between higher education and slavery through innovative public-facing projects that raise important questions. What role have academic institutions played in perpetuating racial inequality? How are scholars and students today working to hold universities accountable for past and present injustices? What role should public engagement play in shaping the future of scholarship and the mission of the university? As campuses buzz back to life, our hosts Ebun Ajayi and Mélena Laudig discuss the legacy of universities and slavery with up-and-coming scholars in Black Studies: R. Isabela Morales, Charlesa Redmond, and Ezelle Sanford, III. The Culture of... President Eisgruber’s message to community on removal of Woodrow Wilson name from public policy school and Wilson College, June 27, 2020 Editorial Board, “After five years of student activism, it’s time for the U. to stop dragging its feet,” The Daily Princetonian, July 2, 2020 Maya Kassutto, “Remains of children killed in MOVE bombing sat in a box at Penn Museum for decades,” BillyPenn, April 21, 2021 “MOVE Bombing at 30,” Democracy Now, May 13, 2015 Benjamin Ball, “Students hold protest in solidarity with MOVE,” May 2, 2021 Association of Black Anthropologists, “Collective Statement Concerning the Possession and Unethical Use of Remains,” April 28, 2021   The Breakdown - Guest Info Isabela Morales, Ph.D. (http://www.risabelamorales.com/)  Dr. R. Isabela Morales received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2019 and is Editor and Project Manager of the Princeton & Slavery Project. Her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2022. After two years working for the 9/11 Memorial Museum, she will join the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum while working on her second book project. Ezelle Sanford III, Ph.D. (http://www.ezellesanford.com/) Dr. Ezelle Sanford III is an Assistant Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University and received his PhD in history of science from Princeton in 2019. A scholar of African American, medical, and urban history, Dr. Sanford’s book project, Segregated Medicine: How Racial Politics Shaped American Healthcare, explores the history of racial inequality in healthcare through the lens of St. Louis’s Homer G. Phillips Hospital, America’s largest segregated hospital in the mid-twentieth century. Before coming to his current position, Dr. Sanford was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Manager for the Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery Project. Charlesa Redmond (https://scholars.duke.edu/person/charlesa.redmond) Charlesa Redmond is a Ph.D. student in History at Duke University. A 2017 graduate of Princeton University, her senior thesis work was based in materials made accessible through the Princeton & Slavery Project. Her Ph.D. research aims to explore how colleges and universities tried to answer “the slavery question,” and how such answers manifested themselves into tangible actions—frustrating the slave trade at times while furthering it at others. See, Hear, Do The Princeton & Slavery Project Penn & Slavery Project and Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery Komal Patel, “Penn Museum to remove Morton Cranial Collection from public view after student opposition,” The Daily Pennsylvanian, July 12, 2020. Rachel L. Swans, “272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?” The New York Times, April 17th, 2016  Georgetown Slavery Archive and Georgetown Reflects on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation “Black at Mizzou,” APM Reports, August 14, 2020  Courtney Perrett, “MU alumna shares her 'Black at Mizzou' experience in new audio documentary,” Missourian, August 18, 2020 Eddie R. Cole, The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2020) “College presidents and the struggle for Black freedom,” Princeton University Press Ideas Podcast, December 1st, 2020 Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams, Tell Them We Are Rising (PBS Independent Lens, 2018)

African American Studies at Princeton University

University Reckonings

When we talk about Juneteenth, sometimes called America's second Independence Day, what exactly are we talking about? How has the end of slavery been celebrated across time in Black communities? What political obligations does its commemoration bring to the fore? Join our hosts, Ebun Ajayi and Mélena Laudig, as they talk with Professor Joshua B. Guild about the past, present, and future of Juneteenth.   Note: At press time, both the Senate and House have passed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. The bill is on President Biden’s desk. The Culture of __ “Celebrating Juneteenth,” ABC News, June 19, 2020 Joshua Gargiulo, “Fact check: Barack Obama mentioned Juneteenth multiple times while president,”  USA Today, June 28, 2020 Jeanine Santuci, “'I made Juneteenth very famous': Trump takes credit for holiday celebrating Emancipation Proclamation,” USA Today, June 18, 2020 “What Is Juneteenth? Dulcé Sloan Explains,” The Daily (Social Distancing) Show, June 19, 2020 “What Juneteenth tells us about the value of black life in America,” The Washington Post, June 19, 2020

Juneteenth: Past, Present, and Future

Our second episode looks at the culture and politics of Black foodways, from the ways in which Black women have used food to create traditions and claim power to the contemporary politics of nutrition, stereotypes, and food shaming. Beyond the platitude that food unites us all, Ebun Ajayi and Mélena Laudig explore the diversity of ways in which food is a site where identities are constructed and contested.

Black Foodways and Food Justice

In our inaugural new episode, Ebun and Mae take a deep dive into questions about the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. From cultural responses to lockdown and the need for a government response to creating a more just and inclusive public health system, our host break down multiple dimensions of the pandemic and point toward some resources to learn more. Introduction Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities” Holmes L, Enwere M, Williams J, et al. “Black-White Risk Differentials in COVID-19 (SARS-COV2) Transmission, Mortality and Case Fatality in the United States: Translational Epidemiologic Perspective and Challenges.” Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(2):4322. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17124322  The Culture of __ “Cardi B Coronavirus Remix (Clean)” Dax, “Coronavirus (State of Emergency)” The Breakdown - Guest Info (Photo credit: IAPHS.org) Prof. Sharrelle Barber (https://drexel.edu/dornsife/academics/faculty/Sharrelle-Barber/) Dr. Sharrelle Barber is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the intersection of "place, race, and health." Through empirical evidence, her work seeks to document how racism becomes "embodied" through the neighborhood context and how this fundamental structural determinant of racial health inequities can be leveraged for transformative change through anti-racist policy initiatives. Dr. Barber’s research is framed through a structural racism lens, grounded in interdisciplinary theories (e.g. Ecosocial Theory and Critical Race Theory) and employs various advanced methodological techniques including multilevel modeling and longitudinal data analyses. Her articles and commentary appear in leading publications, including the Lancet Infectious Disease, the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, and The Nation. A member of the Health Justice Advisory Committee for the Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. Barber is committed to using her scholarship to make the invisible visible, mobilize data for action, and contribute to the transnational dialogue around racism and health inequities. (Photo credit: Sameer Khan/Fotobuddy) Prof. Keith Wailoo (http://www.keithwailoo.com/) Keith Andrew Wailoo is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University where he teaches in the Department of History and the School of Public and International Affairs. The current President of the American Association for the History of Medicine (2020-22), he is an award-winning author on drugs and drug policy; race, science, and health; genetics and society; and history of medicine, disease, health policy and medical affairs in the United States. Wailoo is currently working on several book-length projects: a history of addiction in the United States.; a history of how pandemics past and present transformed life in the United States; and Poisoning Master — a story of enslavement, drugs, the law, and racial hierarchy, set in 1850s Tennessee on the cusp of the Civil War and focusing on the trial of an enslaved girl, a nurse accused of murder. Wailoo  joins Dr. Anthony Fauci and others as a recipient of the 2021 Dan David Prize, an award endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University.  See, Hear, Do Library Company of Philadelphia - Deja Vu, We’ve Been Here Before: Race, Health, and Epidemics Theo Rogers, Milwaukee in Pain Antoine S. Johnson, Elise A. Mitchell, and Ayah Nuriddin, “Syllabus: A History of Anti-Black Racism in Medicine,” Black Perspectives (blog) Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Anchor Books, 2008) Rana A. Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017) Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Black America has a Reason to Question Authorities”

COVID-19 in Black America

Recent Certificate recipient, Heath Pearson, Ph.D. sits down with American Jazz Trumpeter, Christian Scott, to discuss his inspirations, his creative process, and the importance of musically challenging himself. Christian, also known as Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, is an architect of concepts. His signature Stretch Music, a genre-blind form, allows him to create sonic landscapes across multiple forms of sound, language, thought, and culture. At once, Trap, Alt Rock, World Music. Stretch Music is, as its creator, a collision of ideas and identities. Growing up as an heir to a Legendary Afro-New Orleanian Chieftain amidst the complexities of a racially and economically conflicted New Orleans, Adjuah’s work reflects his sensibilities: analytic, expansive and unafraid to confront the social and political realities of our time head-on. Please note that the following content contains strong langauge. Parental advisory is advised

How Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah Is Revolutionizing The Genre Of Jazz

Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. sits down with Assistant Professor Autumn Womack to explore the process of developing a book. Professor Womack sheds light on the power of the archive, the importance of honing in on your ideas, and insights on organizing your ideas for manuscript. We then join Professor Joshua Guild in conversation with activist and author Albert Woodfox. His book, Solitary, follows his unforgettable life story and journey of serving more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world.

The Journey From Solitary To Activism

Legacy and Racialized Politics

In this episode, Prof. Eddie Glaude discusses with Professor Anna Arabindan-Kesson her application of research on textiles, music, and photography for her upcoming work Black Bodies White Gold. Professor Kesson, an Art Historian at heart, reveals the history and connections of blacks and cotton and their turbulent history across America and Europe. Not only does she examine the economic equivalence, in which enslaved people and cotton were commodities in the eyes of the law, but she also explores how it physically framed the way a slave looked, and in turn felt. Ultimately with this research, her goal is to examine how this history complicates what it means to be free and black in today’s world.

16 - Black Bodies, White Gold

In this episode, Eddie Glaude sits down with Professor Wendy Belcher to discuss her recent book.  Prof. Belcher reveals her connection to Ethiopia, and how her life experiences of growing up white in Africa seep through her perspective and understanding. Professor Belcher explains how her curiosity pushed her to research, archive, and translation ancient Ethiopian writing; becoming the foundation of her recent book, The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman.

15 - The Influence of Ancient Ethiopia

As we step into 2019, Professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. and Associate Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor discuss and review the political climate of America. Prof. Taylor points out the importance of continuing to organize and mobilize social activism, like Black Lives Matter, with the understanding that a single objective is more significant than the different political views. Dr. Glaude highlights the deep fear and "Shock and Awe" around President Trump's current administration and policies. Professor Taylor warns of the dangers of moving forward as a nation with an "anything but Trump" perspective; how it lowers the expectations for parties and continues to perpetuate similar issues.  Agree or disagree? Listen, share and let us know what you think.

Inspiring Change in Trump's America

In this episode of the AAS 21 Podcast, Professor Kinohi Nishikawa comes to the table with Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr. to discuss black pulp fiction, and taking seriously “lower” forms of literature in the college classroom, and beyond. Nishikawa’s forthcoming book, Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground is expected out November 2018 (University of Chicago Press). In particular, the book traces the many titles published by Holloway House from the late 1960’s to the imprint’s close in 2008. This fascinating discussion is deep dive into questions about genre, different communities of readers, and how modern literature, and its handling of complex topics, touches other art forms. Professor Nishikawa and Professor Glaude also discuss Nishikawa’s other major work-in-progress, Blueprints for Black Writing: African American Literature and Book Design, which considers the important yet overlooked role book design (e.g., typography, paper quality, cover art) has played in shaping modern African American literature.

Black Pulp Fiction’s Uncanny Origins

In this episode of the AAS 21 podcast, Professor Ruha Benjamin and Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr. discuss science and technology, the allure of objectivity related to this category of work, and consider what it takes to proceed in a “third” way. Professor Benjamin is author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press 2013), Race After Technology, with Polity (forthcoming), and editor of Captivating Technology: Race, Technoscience, and the Carceral Imagination (Duke University Press, forthcoming), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Reimagining Science and Technology

Professor Joshua Guild joins the conversation in this episode of the AAS 21 Podcast. Professor Guild is an associate professor of History and African American Studies at Princeton specializing in twentieth-century African American social and cultural history, urban history, and the making of the modern African diaspora. Professor Guild discussed two works, In the Shadows of the Metropolis: Cultural Politics and Black Communities in Postwar New York and London (Oxford University Press)and The City Lives in You: The Black Freedom Struggle and the Futures of New Orleans. This wide-ranging conversation tracks how black New York, black London, and black New Orleans came into being through a comparative, but relational analysis.

The Making of the Modern Black Diaspora

In this episode of the AAS 21 podcast, Professor Glaude speaks with new colleague Autumn Womack about several projects she has in the works. Womack joined the faculty at Princeton this year as an assistant professor in departments of African American Studies and English. Womack specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American literature, with a particular research and teaching focus on the intersection of visual technology, race, and literary culture. Womack’s forthcoming book is called Reform Divisions: Race, Visuality and Literature in the Progressive Era.

The Pulse of Black Life in the Long 19th Century

The AAS 21 Podcast is back for the first podcast of the 2017-2018 academic year. Professor Glaude speaks to his colleague, Reena N. Goldthree, about her current research into nationalism, migration and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. Professor Goldthree is the new specialist of Afro-Atlantic histories in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton. Goldthree’s forthcoming book is called Democracy Shall be no Empty Romance: War and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean.

Rethinking Empire and Democracy

The Princeton African American Studies Department is known as a convener of conversations about the political, economic, and cultural forces that shape our understanding of race and racial groups. We invite you to listen as faculty “read” how race and culture are produced globally, look past outcomes to origins, question dominant discourses, and consider evidence instead of myth.

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African American Studies at Princeton University

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