Stephen Chandler’s academic journey is defined by a passion and a deep connection to Black education. What began as a theater scholarship evolved into a path shaped by discovery and purpose, ultimately leading him to …
Fugitivity, DEI, PWI Struggles, and Poetics
UW–Madison students present research, art, and scholarship in the 1st Annual African American Studies Student Symposium The symposium featured student presentations spanning art, sociology, and current events. Eleven students delivered talks, and the event concluded …
Rethinking popular narratives through contemporary art
Oluwatosin Philip Adeyemi, a second-year master’s student, shares a synopsis of his thesis and inspirations Philip Adeyemi’s research in the African American studies field offers an intervention into how we engage with visual histories of …
Disrupting normalcies in higher education
Dr. LaShawn Faith Washington on the cruciality of a Black feminist education “bell hooks urges us to transgress. She gives us an avenue to think about the academy in a non-white manner; hooks teaches us …
Gavin Huismann on finding history and purpose
“When I was a Master’s student, I made a discovery in the digitized archives. I found records of Henry Tutt, a Black man who was advocating for Black voting rights and petitioning for a name …
Night at the Theater
On March 6, 2025, students and faculty from the Department of African American Studies came together to attend a performance of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a University Theater production directed by Baron Kelly. Sixty-eight …
Collaging life
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 …
Twenty tracks indicative of 1970
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 …
Heaven Williams, Micah Scarlett, and Rayna Cunningham receive the 2025 Tom Shick Award
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 …
Melanie Herzog presents at the National Gallery of Art
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 …