To the African American Studies community,
On behalf of our department, I welcome you to the first edition of our African American Studies newsletter, created to provide students, Alumni, and friends of the program with current happenings within our community here at UW-Madison. In this first edition, you’ll find a spotlight on Forrest Ashworth, a second-year graduate student in our program, an overview of Dr. Ethelene Whitmire’s co-curated exhibition, “Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century” that was displayed in the Chazen Museum of Art this fall, an interview with department Alumnus Dr. Reverend Alexander Gee regarding his forthcoming spring course on rebuilding black societies through non-profit work, reading recommendations from Dr. Brittney Edmonds, and more.
Next fall, the department will be celebrating fifty-five years of scholarship, leadership, and activism. In 2025, we will be hosting a September symposium to recognize and celebrate all that the department has built through scholarship, community advocacy, and public humanities research. When the department last celebrated an anniversary, it was its fortieth in 2010, and we hosted the symposium “Ancestors, Elders and the Next Generation”. At the time, the department was focused on building relationships between the university and the community. Fifteen years later, the department continues to value the Wisconsin Idea, that education should extend beyond the classroom and into our community. The department has actively been a part of the ideation and construction currently being done for The Center for Black Excellence and Culture, a community-wide project in Madison that is striving to inspire and advance the Black community. We believe that a space that cultivates Black joy and culture is not a luxury, but a necessity for the community. Our department has recently partnered with Freedom Inc., a Madison non-profit campaign organization that aims to address the root causes of violence, poverty, racism, and discrimination. Furthermore, we are proud to collaborate with UW’s Black Cultural Center, the Odyssey Project, and the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies to bring our students a breadth of opportunity, exposure, and a truly interdisciplinary education.
This fall is my fifteenth year in the Department of African American Studies. My research and teaching focuses on the experiences of Black people in British and French North America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Wisconsin has become my home. It is where my husband and I bought our first home and the birthplace of our two girls, Priya (12 years old) and Diya (9 years old). I had not finished my dissertation when the faculty of the Department hired me, they trusted me to complete it, and I did. I earned my PhD four months into my first year as an Anna Julia Cooper Post-Doctoral Fellow. The department’s trust, mentorship, and allocation of resources were exactly what I needed at the time. My colleagues continued to support my work as an early African American historian, which often meant slow and inefficient progress in the archives because the
archive was not built to preserve the histories of marginalized people. Colleagues in the department read and critiqued my work, they encouraged me to seek out fellowships, and they emphasized the value of exceptional teaching. More importantly, they made me feel like I was a valued member of the department.
In the main hallway of the department are display cases holding the books of former and current faculty members. I once vividly dreamed of the day when my book would be displayed. When I earned tenure in 2016, I already knew which book display I wanted my book to be placed within.
My work as a teacher was something I enjoyed in graduate school, but I learned to appreciate and love teaching in the Department of African American Studies. My colleagues modeled dedicated and inspired teaching practices. They took their students seriously. My current research was inspired by students. I told my students that history was personal, essential to our humanity and that it explained our world and how we see ourselves and others. Students noted that I had no specific material on Wisconsin, I sought to address that omission, and it became my current book project: Black on the Midwestern Frontier: Contested Freedoms in Wisconsin, 1725—1868.
In 2023, the department welcomed two new faculty members to our social science division, Dr. Andrene Wright and Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall. Dr. Wright, who was recently interviewed on Madison’s Channel 3000 as a political theory expert covering Vice President Harris’ roots in Madison, focuses her research primarily on Black political theory and Black political mobilization in the United States. Wright investigates how racial politics and anti-blackness is embedded in American institutions. Dr. Stovall, who received the Outstanding Dissertation Award at the Critical Educators for Social Justice with the 2024 American Education Research Association, specializes in education research that centers Black teachers. Stovall is interested in how Black educators navigate and create spaces to combat anti-blackness in their classrooms and school systems. The addition of Dr. Stovall and Dr. Wright not only reflects the department’s goal to offer a robust and interdisciplinary plan of study to students at UW-Madison, but also, allows students to lean into the larger political conversation and add context to social debates.
In closing, I would like to express gratitude to the faculty and staff in the Department of African American Studies for their dedication to educating, guiding, and uplifting students. Moreover, we are grateful for the benevolence of our donors, whose gifts make our research and commitment to education possible.
I wish you all a healthful end to your year,
Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara