This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral 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.

Today's conversation is with Kelly Baker Josephs, Professor of English at the University of Miami, where she currently serves as Director of Africana Studies and Director of English Graduate Studies. She has also held positions as the Sterling Brown Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College, Scholar-in-Residence at the NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Africana Studies. Dr. Josephs is the author of Disturbers of the Peace: Representations of Insanity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature, coeditor of The Digital Black Atlantic, former editor of sx salon: a small axe literary platform, and founding editor of Manchineel + Seagrape, which publishes open-access digital editions of Caribbean plays. She has published special journal issues on Caribbean Digital Humanities, on Kamau Brathwaite, and on Paule Marshall. She is currently at work on a co-edited volume, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2028, as well as Digital Dead Yards, a monograph that examines digital instances of Caribbean grief, mourning, and commemoration.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral 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.

Today's conversation is with Lisa Woolfork, who teaches in the Department of English at University of Virginia. She is a nationally recognized leader in craft, making, and apparel, celebrated for her ability to weave creativity with community. She is the founder of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black Lives Matter, and the host of the award-winning podcast Stitch Please, the leading audio platform centering Black women, girls, and femmes in stitching. With over 300 episodes and nearly a million downloads, her podcast has become a vibrant archive of artistry, technique, and cultural history. A sixth-generation sewing enthusiast, Lisa’s expertise spans sewing organization and systems to help makers work with clarity, as well as sewing everything from hats and shoes to underwear and outerwear—she especially loves making lingerie. She believes deeply in the liberatory power of the stitch and has been recognized with awards for both teaching and community building. Her insights on fashioning freedom through fabric have been featured by the Smithsonian’s African American Craft Summit, the Modern Quilt Guild, and Architectural Digest. Lisa continues to expand the landscape of apparel and craft by highlighting Black creativity, knowledge, and excellence.

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. 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.

Today’s conversation is with McKinley Melton, who teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His research and teaching focus primarily on 20th and 21st Century Africana literatures, with a particular emphasis on contemporary Black poetics. In this conversation, we discuss the cultural politics of Black study, African American poetics, and the place of literary study in Black Studies.