College of Letters & Science
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 series traces landscapes that shaped major authors, and Whitmire had long imagined contributing to it after encountering Ellery Washington’s 2014 …
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 Black Student Strike of 1969. The symposium offered space to reflect on fifty-five years of teaching, research, and steadfast connections …
The Department of African American Studies is seeking Teaching Assistants for the Spring 2026 semester. Preference will be given to second-year UW–Madison graduate students in good standing, with background in African American Studies or related field (Literature, History, Cultural Studies, Theatre, Art History). Learn more and apply to our open positions below: TA in African …
Dr. Sabrina Thomas will be a guest speaker for a working symposium, The Legacies of Mixed-Race Children Born of War: Kinship, Belonging and Transnational Adoption after World War II. This symposium will be held on November 6, 2025, at the Deutsches Haus at New York University. Learn more and register here.
Dr. Brittney Edmonds, assistant professor of African American Studies, has been awarded the inaugural $50,000 Paul Martin Wolff Center seed grant. Edmonds joins a cross-disciplinary UW–Madison research team. Their project, “1776/2026: The Declaration at 250,” will launch a year-long series of campus events and public conversations offering historical, literary, rhetorical, and political-theoretical interpretations of what …
Department of African American Studies affiliate, Dr. Monica White, professor of Environmental Justice, has launched a new, peer-reviewed, Black food sovereignty journal, The Land, Food, and Freedom Journal. The inaugural edition is live now. The Land, Food, and Freedom Journal works to “reclaim space, togetherness, kinship, intellectual rigor, healthy debate, and creative expansiveness in all …
Seventeen faculty, staff, and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been named Morgridge Fellows, and among them are two from the Department of African American Studies: Dr. Andrene Wright-Johnson and Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall. This is the eighth cohort to emerge from The Morgridge Fellows program, led by Morgridge Center Assistant Director of …
Dr. Ethelene Whitmire’s latest book, The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram, the true story of a queer, Black man living in Europe during 20th century, will be released from Penguin Random House on February 3, 2026. “Award-winning historian Ethelene Whitmire unearthed a trove of Reed’s letters when she met one of his descendants at a …
Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall and a team of eleven undergraduate and graduate students in the SoulFolk Collective were interviewed by Aaron R. Conklin for UW–Madison’s Sift and Winnow publication this July. Read the full piece, and watch the corresponding video segment by Marlita Bevenue here.
Master of Arts student, Forrest Ashworth, graduated this spring after the defense of his thesis, “Black Meteorology: Sable Elyse Smith and Cameron Rowland on Anti-Black Carcerality”. Ashworth will be continuing his studies this fall in a Ph.D. program. Congratulations, Forrest!