Ruth Nicole Brown, Suban Nur Cooley, LeConté Dill, Yvonne Morris - Department of African and African American Studies, Michigan State University

This is Ashley Newby 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 four members of the Department of African and African American Studies at Michigan State University: Ruth Nicole Brown (current chair of the department), Suban Nur Cooley, LeConté Dill, and Yvonne Morris. In this discussion, we explore the meaning of Black Studies for thinking community, gender, sexuality, and the past and future of Black survival and thriving.