The Essence Theme Community traveled to Chicago this fall on a daylong field trip designed to offer students an artful and educational experience, coinciding with the Department of African American Studies’ ongoing work to transition …
Month: November 2025
Alumni production
“Porcelain Dolls and Chocolate Dreams,” a new student-written and student-directed play by UW–Madison African American Studies alum DeOnna Garrison, brings a rare spotlight to Black experiences on predominantly white campuses, and the cast says the …
New faculty member studies policing, race, and the carceral state
Dr. Max Felker-Kantor joined the Department of African American Studies as an Associate Professor in fall 2025. Affiliated with the Department of History and the Department of Educational Policy Studies, Felker-Kantor’s scholarship focuses on policing, …
Pulitzer winner meets with students
Percival Everett visited UW–Madison this November as part of the university’s Go Big Read program, which selected his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel James for the 2025–26 academic year. The novel reimagines Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from …
Examining race, war, and responsibility
Dr. Sabrina Thomas, a 20th-century historian, joined the Department of African American Studies in fall 2025. An affiliate of the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies and Department of History, her first book, Scars of …
Inciting love in 19th-century Wisconsin archives
Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara’s forthcoming article for the Journal of the Early Republic, “Black Love and Joy: The Pleasure of Correspondence in early Wisconsin, 1850 – 1857”, explores the letters of Caroline Shepard, a free Black …
Song influencing scholarship
Dr. Langston Collin Wilkins reflects on ten tracks that led him to pursue the field of Ethnomusicology Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – “Ohio” (1973) My true introduction to the role, function and meaning of …
What would it mean to design a Black-centered school in today’s political climate?
Launching on Madison’s South Side in the 2026-2027 school year, The SoulFolk Saturday School will be a culturally grounded Saturday school for Black high school students in Madison, Wisconsin. Housed within the Center for Black …
On process and reticence
In her December 2024 Footsteps column, Dr. Ethelene Whitmire ruminates on 20th-century writer Nella Larsen, her semi-autobiographical character Helga Crane from the 1928 novel Quicksand, and time spent navigating Copenhagen. The New York Times’ Footsteps …
To honor legacy
The Department of African American Studies gathered to mark its 55th anniversary this fall with a four-day symposium, examining the department’s evolution and enduring influence on scholarship and community-based engagement since its founding after the …