We launched our first episodes on June 28, 2022, and we posted episode 200 on December 16, 2024. My colleague Elizabeth Cali served as my trusted co-editor, taking a close look at all 200 episodes.
We had several different guest contributors. While our focus was primarily African American novels and novelists, we ended up touching on a variety of topics, including comic books, Black voice actors and audiobooks, film and casting, literary data work, and on and on.
I produced this project with a deep sense of purpose. I realized that increasing numbers of audiences were acquiring knowledge through audio and in particular through podcasts. There's this saying that "everybody has a podcast." But I realized that hard any of the people in everybody specialized in African American literary studies.
Our field's presence in podcasting is minimal to non-existent. So I dived in with the feeling that I was assisting make our field more visible audible.
I was fortunate to have my colleague Cali as a sounding board. She and I were about 8 years into a long-running conversation about African American literary studies when I began developing the idea for the podcast. The variety of the topics paralleled the trajectory of our conversations.
We also had help from a range of colleagues in the field and beyond. I asked several different colleagues in the field to contribute episodes related to their expertise. I co-teach a class on comic books and diversity with Stephyn Phillips, so I invited him to contribute episode scripts.
Early on in the process, I somehow encountered a really talented voice artist Kassandra Timm. She ended up narrating almost all of our episodes. She turned in really high quality audio that was always read energetically and thoughtfully.
The project was made possible by a Mellon Foundation grant. There's no way that we could've produced this project and had this much assistance without that funding. So I'm really grateful. I'm also glad I got a chance to see what was possible.
You can check out the episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or here on the site. You can check out the episodes by category here:
You can also check out the episodes on our site, where it's possible to view items using a search.
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