Yvonne Chireau - Department of Black Studies, Swarthmore College

This is Ashley Newby 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, 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 Yvonne Chireau, Peggy Chan Professor of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus of Religion at Swarthmore College.  She is the author of Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003) and the co-editor of Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (1999). Her current book project is called Graphic Voodoo: Black Religion in the Comic Book Imaginary. Dr. Chireau lives in Delaware County, Pennsylvania with her beloved family and a three-legged cat. Her writings on the intersections of magic, Africana religions, and popular culture tropes of Voodoo can be found online at The Academic Hoodoo (academichoodoo.com).