Congratulations to Dr. Mosi Adesina Ifatunji, professor of African American Studies and Sociology, who has been named an Honored Instructor for the Fall 2025 semester through UW Housing. This marks Dr. Ifatunji’s third Honored Instructor Award since joining the department and university in 2019.
Dr. Brittney Edmonds has joined the editorial board for the oldest continuously published journal in Black studies, The Black Scholar, as their Associate Editor. “Founded on the premise that Black writers, scholars, activists and artists could participate in dialogue within its pages, The Black Scholar’s primary mission has been to chronicle, analyze, and debate the …
Professor Alexander Shashko has been named an Honored Instructor for the Fall 2025 semester through UW Housing, a completely student-led award initiative. Each semester, University Housing requests nominations from students on educators who have inspired their learning and daily practice through the student-led program “Honored Instructors.” Professor Shashko, a historian and music scholar, teaches courses …
“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 collaboration behind it is just as powerful as the performance. Jnae Thompson, cast member and African American Studies Class of …
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 …