Maurice J. Hobson - Department of Africana Studies, Georgia State University

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 Maurice J. Hobson, who teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at Georgia State University.Along with numerous scholarly and public facing articles, he is the author of The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (2019) and co-author of With Faith in God and Heart and Mind: A History of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity (2025). In this conversation, we discuss community and academic work, the history, politics, and culture of Black study, and how Black Studies sensibilities shape writing intellectual and popular history.