Season 2: #5 - Lavelle Porter, The Blackademic Life

In this episode of Rocking the Academy, co-hosts Roopika Risam and Mary Churchill talk with Lavelle Porter, author of The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual, and Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology. We talk with Lavelle about his recently published book, the experiences of Black academics, and some of the biggest challenges facing Black scholars today. Find us on Twitter: @roopikarisam, @mary_churchill, and @alavelleporter.

Episode 5 of the Rocking the Academy podcast, hosted by Roopika Risam, Mary L. Churchill, Lavelle Porter, titled "Season 2: #5 - Lavelle Porter, The Blackademic Life" was published on March 4, 2020 and runs 12 minutes.

March 4, 2020 ·12m · Rocking the Academy

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Summary

Episode Description

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

Lavelle's recently published book The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual .
Lavelle's favorite Black academic novels, including The Mad Man, Erasure, Glyph, I'm Not Sidney Poitier, and The Chosen Place, The Timeless People.
Lavelle's motivation for writing the book and his journey.
Responses to the book related to the current political climate and the current moment in higher education.
How Lavelle used his acknowlegements as a space to address the experience of writing while working at a teaching-intensive institution.
Historical changes to the experiences of Black academics and experiences in historically Black colleges and universities vs. predominantly white institutions.
The biggest challenges facing Black scholars today and the role of allies in improving working conditions.
Hope for the future of higher ed in Black Lives Matter and student activism.

Resources Discussed in this Episode:

Music Credits: “Come Right Here” by Tendinite, licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 CC-BY-NC-ND license.