Michelle B. Taylor - Educator, Author, Advocate

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 Michelle B. Taylor, an educator, author, and advocate who writes under the name Feminista Jones. She has published widely in popular and scholarly venues, has spoken in academic and community spaces across the country, and earned a doctorate in Africology and African American Studies from Temple University where she teaches courses on gender, race, and media. Her books include Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets (2019), The Secret of Sugar Water (2017), and Push The Button (2014). In this conversation, we discuss the importance of Africological approaches to Black study, the relationship between scholarly inquiry and community activism, and the place of popular and scholarly writing in Black Studies.