College of Letters & Science
A conversation with Dr. Quanda Johnson Quanda Johnson’s personal and professional journey resists a single definition. “I am a collage,” she says simply. “I am collaging my life together.” When she speaks, her language pulses with memory. Her work, a layered and textured experience inspired by the likes of Romare Bearden, Coco Fusco, and Bill …
Music scholar, historian, and African American Studies lecturer Alexander Shashko turns the clock back fifty-five years: “This was supposed to be a list of ten songs from 1970, the year that the Department of African American Studies began. As I was compiling it, though, I kept finding myself trying to choose between two songs that …
The Tom Shick Award is given to undergraduate or graduate students who have maintained a high academic standing and who have demonstrated an intellectual vigor and concern for racial equality that epitomizes the life of Tom W. Shick. Shick came to UW–Madison as a graduate student in 1969 and became a lecturer in 1973. Shick …
Last Saturday, April 5th, African American studies lecturer Melanie Herzog served as a moderator and presenter on the panel: “A Sense of Purpose and Integrity” at the National Gallery of Art’s Elizabeth Catlett exhibition. With an emphasis on artists’ encounters across cultural and geographical borders, socially engaged artistic practice, and intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, …
“The main goal of this project is two-fold,” Courtney Parker West writes, describing her latest podcast project, “In light of the recent regime change and the waterfall of policy changes happening that will continue to adversely affect people of color broadly and specifically Black people, this is a space where stories of resistance and dreaming …
The interdisciplinary lab group PoSH (Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy of Satire and Humor) announces a special episode of SNL101, a podcast designed for educators who use Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches as teaching tools. Hosted by Charisse L’Pree, Associate Professor of Communications at Syracuse University, and Luvell Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of …
“As an African American scholar who has studied the Harlem Renaissance and the experiences of Black Americans living in Denmark, a country I’ve visited 18 times, I have been retracing Larsen’s footsteps in Copenhagen for the last two years.” — Dr. Ethelene Whitmire in “Looking for the Restless Soul of Nella Larsen in Copenhagen” Published …
The Bolz Center for Arts Administration and the Division of the Arts have opened an opportunity for student entrepreneurs with an interest in the arts: Proposals are due by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, January 17, 2025. Each year, a talented panel of judges review proposals for creativity, innovation, potential success and added value to the …
Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall has been awarded the Paul and Kate Farmer English Journal Writing Award for her article “Black Teachers’ Use of Liberatory Design to Promote Literacies of Healing” co-written with Lamar Timmons-Long, Thomas J. Rodney, and Taylor Hall. This award will be given at the NCTE Annual Convention. Read Dr. Stovall’s article here. …
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 …