Charles Athanasopoulos - Department of African American and African Studies, Ohio State University

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a Mellon grant sponsored 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 Charles Athanasopoulos, who teaches in the Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University. He is the author of a number of scholarly pieces on politics and Black cultural life, as well as the book Black Iconoclasm: Public Symbols, Racial Progress, and Post-Ferguson America. In this conversation, we discuss the role of rhetorical traditions in Black Studies, iconic figures and moments in Black history and culture, and the various expressions of blackness and Black life in the political work of liberation struggle.