Wendy M. Thompson - Department of African American Studies, San Jose State 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 Wendy M. Thompson, who teaches in the Department of African American Studies at California State University, San Jose. She is a researcher in African American history and cultural studies and is a practicing poet whose debut collection Black California Gold was published in 2025. In this conversation, we discuss the undisciplined character of Black Studies, the place of the creative voice in Black Studies writing, and the importance of writing from a sense of place.