AfricaNow! February 22, 2023 Joshua Myers with Dr. Bedour Alagraa on Of Black Study 

Topic and Guests: As we commemorate Black History Month, AfricaNow! features a portion of recent discussion between Joshua Myers and Dr. Bedour Alagraa.  The conversation which took place at Washington, DC’s Sankofa Video Books & Cafe focuses on Joshua Myers latest book Of Black Study.  The overview of the book notes that “Of Black Study explores how the ideas of Black intellectuals created different ways of thinking and knowing in their pursuit of conceptual and epistemological freedom.  Joshua Myers explores the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logics of academic disciplinarity. Bookended by meditations with June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, the book focuses on how W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers, and Cedric Robinson contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge.

“Especially geared toward understanding the contemporary evolution of Black Studies in the neoliberal university, Of Black Study allows us to consider the stakes of intellectual freedom and the path toward a new world.”  (From https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745344126/of-black-study/)

Dr. Joshua M. Myers is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Howard University and is a member of AfricaNow!’s and Africa World Now Project’s collective. He is the author of Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition and We are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Protest of 1989.  Dr. Bedour Alagraa is Assistant professor of Political and Social Thought in the Department of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. 

The full conversation is available onSankofa Video Books & Cafe’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@SankofaVB at https://www.youtube.com/@SankofaVB/streams

MUSIC ON THE SHOW: intro--“BLUE BOSSA” BY DEXTER GORDON remembering ancestor Dexter Gordon who on February 27 would have been turning 100 years old; closing--“I WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE” BY NINA SIMONE commemorating her birthday which was yesterday February 21 and would have been 90 years old. 

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Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into AfricaNow! live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 2:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

Photo of Of Black Study January 21, 2023 event at Sankofa Video Books & Cafe https://www.sankofa.com/events/of-black-study-josh-myers-in-conversation-with-dr-bedour-alagraa

AfricaNow! Feb. 22, 2023 Joshua Myers with Dr. Bedour Alagraa on Of Black Study

AfricaNow! August 23, 2023 Of Hesitance: W.E.B Du Bois from Josh Myers’s Of Black Study w/ Nathalie Frédéric Pierre

Topic and Guest: As we continue to commemorate Black August, we feature a critical exploration of Chapter 1 of Dr. Joshua M. Myers’s book Of Black Study.  Chapter 1 is entitled “Of Hesitance: W.E.B. Du Bois.” This is the first of five sessions where we unpack Myers’s meditations on Black Study, a line of thinking that is calling for us to think of ways to merge the material with the nonmaterial. To call into question the very foundations of systems of thought that guide our everyday practices of being human, of being human in the rhythms of Blackness.   This is a conversation between AfricaNow!’s Executive Producer and Co-Host James Pope and Dr. Nathalie Frédéric Pierre, an Assistant Professor of History at Howard University.  

In the classroom and within her research agenda, Professor Pierre highlights the plans and processes people of African descent set into motion in order to sustain sites of autonomy across the Americas.  She is currently writing her first book, The Vessel of Independence... Must Save Itself’: Haitian State Formation, 1757 - 1815 which articulates the political thought of Haitian statesmen, who were bound to preserve antislavery and create a government suitable for emancipated citizens of African origin in a revolutionary Atlantic world still reliant on enslaved labor.  Her work has been published in The Journal of Haitian Studies, Cultural Dynamics, Remembrance: Loss, Hope, Recovery after the Earthquake in Haiti, and other forums.

Myers opens, Of Black Study, with an epigraph from June Jordan, who along with Barbara Christian, Addison Gayle, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Toni Cade Bambara were supporting students in a struggle around the “Free University”, an attempt to realize the dream of a Black University at City College of New York.  ....
 
MUSIC ON THE SHOW: intro and on sign-off--“MAYIBUYE” BY HUGH MASEKELA; intro by James Pope--“MILLIONS OF US (Part 2)” BY BCUC—BANTU CONTINUA UHURU CONSCIOUSNESS; break--“HYMN TO FREEDOM” BY OSCAR PETERSON commemorating his birthday on August 15 (August 15, 1925—December 23, 2007);outro of interview--“FREEQUENCY” BY BLACK STAR FEAT. BLACK THOUGHT; closing song--“STRAIGHT AHEAD” BY COUNT BASIE commemorating Count Basie’s birthday on August 21 (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984).

Support AfricaNow! and your community station WPFW.  Donate online visit https://pledge.wpfwfm.org/index.php and then on Step 1: Contribution scroll down to AfricaNow! to make your donation to the show. Or on our CashApp, which is $WPFW write it is for AfricaNow! and include your email address. Thank you.

Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into AfricaNow! live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 2:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

New tracks tagged #African Diaspora Studies