Tanisha M. Jackson - Department of African American Studies, Syracuse 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 Tanisha M. Jackson, who teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University where she is also Executive Director of the Community Folk Art Center. Her research focuses on the place of community art practice and education in liberation struggle. Along with a number of scholarly essays and curated exhibitions, she is the author Black Women's Art Ecosystems: Sites of Wellness and Self-care (2025), which was awarded the Anna Julia Cooper and CLR James award for outstanding publication in Africana Studies (National Council for Black Studies). She recently received an National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Community Folk Art Center's inaugural artists in residency program and she is the founder and host of the film series, Black Arts Speak. In this conversation, we discuss the place of art in the field of Black Studies, how art and community expand our sense of liberation work, and how the Black Studies classroom links the personal, the communal, and the aesthetic.