Therí Pickens - Departments of English and Africana Studies, Bates College

Today's conversation is with Therí Pickens, who teaches in the Departments of English and Africana Studies at Bates College. She has created powerful, groundbreaking, award-winning scholarship in the fields of Arab American Studies, Black Studies, Comparative Literature, and Disability Studies. She wrote Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke University Press 2019), a theoretical tour-de-force which fundamentally shapes Black Disability Studies. Her editorial work ushered in new conversations about Black Disability Studies in two major journals: African American Review (2017) and College Language Association Journal (2021). Her first monograph, New Body Politics: Narrating Black and Arab Identity in the United States (Routledge 2014) brought together Arab and Black American literary and cultural production through the lenses of Black feminism and Disability Studies. In another editorial project, Arab American Aesthetics (Routledge 2018), she curates a discussion about what makes artistic production uniquely Arab American.Prof. Pickens's public writing refuses to diminish or pre-masticate the complexities of our world for a wider public. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Black Girl Nerds, The Counter, Inside Higher Ed, and Ms. Magazine. She is a sought-after podcast guest who brings wit, excitement, and humor to podcasts including Busy Being Black, Contemporary Black Canvas, New Books Network, The Cipher, and the MoMA Podcast.Alongside her scholarship, Prof. Pickens is a poet, whose first collection, What Had Happened Was, will debut in 2025 from Duke University Press. She is a proud alum of Margaret Porter Troupe Arts (2006), Community of Writers (2017, 2020), Kenyon Writers' Retreat (2018), Colgate Writers Workshop (2019), Bread loaf - Sicily (2019), Hurston/Wright (2023), VONA (2023), and Rutgers' University Poets and Scholars Retreat (2023). Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Diode, Black Renaissance Noire, Omnium Gatherum Quarterly, Langston Hughes Review, The Madison Review, and Cane: A New Critical Edition.