College of Letters & Science
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!
Last month, Professor Alexander Shashko was awarded the L&S Academic Staff Teaching Excellence Award. Selected by the Dean of L&S, Eric Wilcots, and a selection committee, this award recognizes excellence in teaching and mentoring undergraduate students. Professor Shashko was one of six to be recognized. Shashko was nominated by Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara and Hope Kelham. …
Professor Carl Grant, former Chair of the Department of African American Studies and professor of Curriculum and Instruction, has been awarded the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorship. This award recognizes outstanding efforts in teaching and service. Congratulations, Dr. Grant!
This week, Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara appeared on PBS Wisconsin’s “Why Race Matters” segment in an episode on the history of Black Midwesterners before the Great Migration. “If you wanted to understand wealth gaps among African Americans and white Americans, you need to understand history,” Dr. Clark-Pujara notes. “If you want to understand why Milwaukee looks …
The SoulFolk Collective W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked the question of the Black community: “How does it feel to be a problem?” Drawing inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, the SoulFolk Collective (affectionately called “SoCo”) is a community of undergraduate and graduate researchers in the Department of African American …
Dr. Andrene Wright-Johnson joined the Department of African American Studies as an Anna Julia Cooper Postdoctoral Fellow in the fall of 2023 after completing an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University. Now an Assistant Professor, she conducts research and hosts lectures on Black political engagement, mobilization, resistance, and radical imagination at the …
Bob Trondson on the impact of human stories As the founder of Cloud North Films, Bob Trondson brings a passion for history, literature, and a background in African American Studies to his work in documentary storytelling—producing short-form films, or micro-docs, for nonprofits, schools, and grassroots organizations. Trondson’s career began at Wisconsin PBS, where he directed …
In the wake of student activism, our department offered its first classes fifty-five years ago, in the fall of 1970. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 sparked a wave of student protests on college campuses across the country. Black students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison reacted by orchestrating a series of …