Zora's Daughters

This is our fiftieth and final episode! Thank you everyone for your support over the past three years, we could not have done this without you. In this episode, you will hear our incredible conversation with Professors Ryan Jobson and Jennifer Freeman Marshall, PhD Candidate Delande Justinvil, and poet and ritual worker Destiny Hemphill from Wednesday, May 3rd.

We spent an hour and a half thinking together on tending to the past and honoring our ancestors as we imagine new futures. As you listen, consider: What will you leave behind for your descendants? What gifts will you choose to share with the world with the knowledge that they are yours for that reason? What will you give, particularly at this moment where we must fight for our liberation by any means necessary? And how can you call on your ancestors to meet you there and “order your steps”?

In this short bonus episode, Alyssa and Brendane share their hot takes of the week: Angel Reese and Black feminists, the problems with appropriation of AAVE, and the rise of the vanilla girl aesthetic.

Welcome to our ICONversations, a series where you will hear iconic Black feminist anthropologists answer five questions about their intellectual projects and growth, what their work has meant to them, and the imprints they want to leave on the world.

Listen to our candid ICONversation with Dr. Yolanda T. Moses, the professor and mentor who is truly about that Black feminist life. We had an inspiring conversation with Dr. Moses, learning about how she models change and lives her principles. In her words: "Praxis is where I experience the change I want to see." Dr. Moses was the first woman President of CUNY City College in New York, served as Associate Vice Chancellor, Diversity and Inclusion at UC Riverside, and continues to strategically collaborate to tackle structures of inequity in higher education.

Other Places to Find Dr. Moses:

Welcome to our ICONversations, a series where you will hear iconic Black feminist anthropologists answer five questions about their intellectual projects and growth, what their work has meant to them, and the imprints they want to leave on the world.

We're doing something a little different today: We had the opportunity to speak with Tracy Heather Strain, award-winning writer, director, and producer whose most recent work covers the life and times of Zora Neale Hurston. Her work aims to reveal the ways that our positionality shape lives and reflect and challenge society's narratives. As she says: "I feel a great responsibility to try to bring complexity and nuance to Black women's lives on screen." 

Welcome to our ICONversations, a series where you will hear iconic Black feminist anthropologists answer five questions about their intellectual projects and growth, what their work has meant to them, and the imprints they want to leave on the world.

In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa speak (and cry!) with Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, a Black feminist anthropologist who has practiced within and beyond the academy. We loved how she saw the vision of our questions and how she stands firmly and powerfully in her lanes while putting joy and passion first. In her words: "Joy is a human right." Dr. Cole was the first Black woman president of Spelman College, served as director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, and continues to follow her passion through activism and scholarship.

Welcome to our ICONversations, a series where you will hear iconic Black feminist anthropologists answer five questions about their intellectual projects and growth, what their work has meant to them, and the imprints they want to leave on the world.

We have a major announcement up top so be sure to tune in!

Today on the episode we center... YOU! We asked for your listener questions and wow, you delivered. In this episode, we answer questions about pursuing a PhD and career advance, dealing with imposter syndrome, taking unprescribed "academic performance enhancing medications," love bombing and giving cis het men the cheat codes to your heart, dating bisexual men, moving in together before marriage, getting help without involving the police, not making abolition about your feelings, learning from our elders, and making it less acceptable to record people in public.

We're doing this 'fro the culture! In our last episode of the semester Brendane and Alyssa talk featurism, texturism, the politics of Black hair, and are joined by biological anthropologist Tina Lasisi.

We'll be back in 2023 with new episodes. In the meantime, don't forget to submit your listener letters and voice notes to zorasdaughterspod@gmail.com and we might read or play it and respond in our next episode. Happy Holidays!

What's the Word? Featurism and Texturism. These are colorism's insidious cousins: prejudicial or preferential treatment based on the proximity of their features and hair texture to Eurocentric standards of beauty.

It's all about Zora: Writer, Anthropologist, Filmmaker, Genius of the South, Capricorn Queen!

What's The Word? Anthropology. Difficult to define, but we throw our ideas into the ring! We cover its history, genealogy, what we think makes something anthropological, and what Indiana Jones has to do with Alyssa's research.

What We're Reading. You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston. We chose two of Hurston's essays that resonated the most with us and our scholarly pursuits: We read 'The Ten Commandments of Charm' and 'Crazy For This Democracy' to explore the politics of relationships and the hypocrisy of our "ass-and-all" democracy.

What In The World?! In this segment, we discuss the timelessness of Zora's work, how we're still facing the same obstacles as she did a century ago, letting Anthropology burn, why two Black women graduate students shouldn't be the only ones motivating students to stay in anthropology, the purposeful misreading of Zora's 'conservative' opinions, and why you should talk about the race war in front of white people.

We were riding the struggle bus recording and editing this episode, but thank you all for this year, we're so encouraged by your support!

Discussed In This Episode

Get in loser, we're doing neuroexpansive shit!

Now that we're "back to normal," it takes more than hitting 'Leave Meeting' to exit a boring talk! We skip the usual structure of our episodes and speak freely about preparing for and attending conferences as graduate students. We answer listener questions like, What's the point of going to conferences? Should I attend a conference as an undergrad? How do I socialize and connect with others at an academic conference? How do you manage the financial aspect of attending conferences?

We also spill the tea on people getting roasted after their talks and our best and worst experiences of conference-going! Tune in, because it's helpful and entertaining - our specialty!

Book recommendations:

"I'm not Black, I'm OJ!" Today, Brendane and Alyssa are talking kinship, belonging, diaspora wars, and what we need to do to get free.

What's the Word? Kinship. Kinship studies are foundational to the discipline of anthropology, but in this section we talk about how people are taking up the concept to tell their own stories today.

What We're Reading. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Trade by Saidiya Hartman. In this segment, we read the first two chapters to trace Hartman's attention to kinship and belonging in the afterlife of slavery. What does it feel like to be a stranger everywhere?

What in the World?! We talk about the "intratribal conflict" of the African diaspora wars, the choice of identity and how it's a shortcut for people to understand how to oppress you, dating tips from our moms, boycotting The Woman King, how ADOS and FBA strategies disenfranchise Black Americans and promote anti-blackness, and Brendane's personal experience visiting Ghana.

By the way, we're on break! We'll be back with episode 5 on November 9th - just in time for the AAA Annual Meeting!

Discussed In This Episode

Ding dong! In this week's episode, Alyssa and Brendane are talking about sovereignty, non-sovereignty, and the death of the sovereign Queen Elizabeth II to ask whether it's possible (and desirable!) to leave the past behind while creating our collective future.

(CW: rape, sexual assault 1:05:00- 1:16:00)

What's the Word? Sovereignty. Defined as autonomy, freedom from external control, sovereignty is typically considered a positive. Brendane and Alyssa unpack the ways the concept is also rooted in power and domination.

What We're Reading. Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment by Yarimar Bonilla. Bonilla examines how contemporary activists in Guadeloupe imagine and contest the limits of postcolonial sovereignty, challenging us rethink our received ideas about freedom, independence, nationalism, and revolution, and our commitment to sovereignty itself.

What In The World?! In this segment, we discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth II and why Alyssa has complicated feelings about it; why turning to past values (that never existed) is evidence of crisis; the problem with Jeremy O. Harris' Slave Play, Bridgerton, and The Courtship; and whether you can really have love under racial or patriarchal domination.

Your favorite terrestrial commoners are back! For our first episode of the new season, we're talking about popular culture, the cult of celebrity and influence, and how they undermine radical movements for change.

What's the Word? Postfeminism. Originally used to describe the backlash to the second wave feminist movement, postfeminism is an ideology that suggests we no longer need feminism because we have accomplished the goals of the women's movement. This ideology is expressed culturally in TV, film, and other forms of media. 

In this final episode of the season, you will hear our incredible conversation with Professors Riché J. Daniel Barnes, Kevin Quashie, and Autumn Womack, and vocalist and composer Candice Hoyes from Wednesday, May 4th.

Traditionally, Zora Neale Hurston has been more widely celebrated for her contributions to American literature than as an anthropologist and folklorist. In recent years, we have begun to see more mainstream recognition of her interventions into the discipline of anthropology. This re-membering has been accompanied by a variety of aesthetic invocations, particularly to signal disruption, authenticity, and the avant-garde. In this way, Zora is called into practice and treated as an object of use. We will invite academics and artists to discuss how Zora Neale Hurston inspires their work and the phenomenon of Black women’s use as the “sliding glass door” (James 2015) that opens up into new conditions of possibility. We will reflect upon the instrumentalization of Black women to ask: How can we tend to Black women’s memory and legacy with care?

In today's episode, we are too TIED to repeat ourselves! There is simultaneously so much to talk about and little we haven’t said in previous episodes, so we're treating this as a moment to hold space, be in community with each other and you all, and really, just rant about what in the world is going on?! You'll hear an update from Brendane and Alyssa (and why she's joining one of the industrial complexes they mentioned in the last episode!).

Discussed today:

Roe vs. Wade and the Supreme Court leak
Kevin Samuels
The Met Gala

Previous episodes to help you make sense of our current moment:

The industrial complex is an industrial complex! Today we’ll be talking about the spread of industrial complexes, non-profits, so-called activist influencers, the controversy around BLM Global Network spending, and the whispers around Nikole Hannah-Jones and Kimberlé Crenshaw being problématique.

What's the Word? Industrial Complex. Popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the industrial complex refers to the profit-driven enmeshment of the state and private industry in a way that makes it more profitable to perpetuate the problem they claim to solve.

What We're Reading. “In The Shadow of the Shadow State” by Ruth Wilson Gilmore in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. In this essay, Gilmore discusses the rise of the non-profit industrial complex as an industry that takes up "kindness" work for those the state has abandoned and operates to suppress revolution. Her solution is to take the money and run, without fooling ourselves into believing the state or capitalism will give us the keys to our freedom.

What in the World?! In this segment, we discuss our ongoing experience of forming a non-profit, the questionable financial decisions of Black Lives Matter, what Alyssa and Brendane would do if we came into $90 million, whether we really should be putting our faith or support in famous people or so-called "activist influencers," and why you should stay away from Teach For America.

Today we're talking about the quintessential anthropological experience: fieldwork! We heeded your requests to do more casual episodes, so we're answering questions about what the field is, what it's like to go to the field, and other tips we have.

We start out with Zora Neale Hurston's imagery of culture as a tight chemise and the spy-glass of anthropology. We discuss how we got to our research projects; how we define the field; ethnographies that inspired our fieldwork; tips, strategies and resources for getting through the difficult parts of field work; doing field work in the pandemic and the future of field work; maintaining boundaries; and what our next research project would be. Plus a little moment where the field and the podcast collide! 

Happy Birthday to our wonderful co-host Alyssa! We're back for our second episode of the semester to talk about hegemony, institutional power, and the academic hierarchies that fail to protect Black queer and trans women.

What's the Word? Hegemony. We give a brief explanation of hegemony and how it comes into being.

What We're Reading “Black Lesbians—Who Will Fight for Our Lives but Us?”: Navigating Power, Belonging, Labor, Resistance, and Graduate Student Survival in the Ivory Tower by S. Tay Glover. We discuss our experiences with pedagogies of accommodation (Chandra Mohanty) and being feminist killjoys and willful subjects (Sara Ahmed) in our department, being disposable randoms of the political economy of the academy, and resisting respectability politics and our impossibility through silence and self-love.

What in the World?! We discuss the controversy surrounding Harvard anthropology professor John Comaroff, the way universities are "protected enclosures of unchecked violence and abuse of power," why anthropology is often at the center of academic controversies, and how Title IX regulations are designed to protect the university and break the will of victims and survivors.

There wouldn't be a fabric of the nation if Black Americans hadn't picked the cotton for it! Brendane and Alyssa are back for Semester 2 with announcement of all the big things we've been talking about and getting into decolonization, history and national myths with The 1619 Project, banning books, racial constructs, and whether we really need Black History Month.

What's the Word? Decolonization. We explain the difference between colonialism and imperialism as well decolonization and decoloniality.

What We're Reading. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones. We discuss her contribution to understanding history and historiography and writing the contributions of enslaved Black Americans and their descendants into U.S. history and memory, how it's become the center of "diaspora wars" and "POC wars," the lag between scholarly knowledge and mainstream knowledge, and the project's choice of language around the system of slavery.

What in the World?! In this segment, we ask whether we really need Black History Month, the wave of banning books by and about Black, queer, and people of color AKA further under-educating and underserving Black and brown children, fragile white men's ideas about how to "combat" the teaching of critical race theory in schools (which we posit they take literally to mean 'ideas the criticize white people'), and Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan talking about what they think race is.

Who are these new folx on the block?! In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa are talking about gentrification, blackness, mambo sauce, and the new show Harlem (2021) on Amazon Prime that has Blackademic Twitter abuzz. There are definitely spoilers in this episode!

What's the Word? Gentrification. We explain the term, its origins, and the causes and effects of gentrification on those who are displaced.

What We're Reading. "'D.C. is mambo sauce': Black cultural production in a gentrifying city" by Ashanté M. Reese. This essay centers mambo sauce as the object of observation* to examine larger tensions related to race, class, and power in the city. Both Brendane and Alyssa have Capital City Co mambo sauce in their fridges, speaking to the way materials associated with Blackness is appropriated, commodified, and circulated. We discuss the way these materials of belonging for Black people become markers of authenticity at the same time Black people are being pushed out of their neighborhoods.

We're back y'all! Thank you for accommodating our much needed break. In return, we're giving you one: no readings! In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa debrief on the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association that was held in Baltimore from November 17-21, 2021. We kiki and spill tea on what we expected from the conference (Alyssa's first!), our favorite moments and panels, our desired professorial aesthetics, and which professors were doing the wobble at the Association of Black Anthropologists' 50th anniversary reception. In true ZD fashion, we distinguish between critique and anti-blackness in demands for solidarity - in sum: Black folks aren't carrying you across the bridge to liberation.

In the second part of the episode, we discuss conference do's and don'ts, particularly around cultivating mentors, how you spend your time, and not feeling pressured to present early in your program or career.

Finally, it was such a pleasure meeting everyone IRL and having the opportunity to share space and ideas with you. Our hearts are full!

We're reimagining Black feminism and fugitivity, y'all! In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane are joined by graduate student and educator Naomi Simmons-Thorne. Together, they unpack fugitivity, bridging the bifurcation in Black feminist theory, the attack on CRT, fugitive pedagogy, and and COVID in the classroom.

What's the Word? Fugitivity. We discuss the development of fugitivity and debate who and how people can practice fugitivity.

What We're Reading. "Black Feminist Theory and its Wayward Futures" by Naomi Simmons-Thorne. We're joined by Naomi to discuss her paper where she maps the relationship between the divergent Black feminist paradigms and offers a bridge that tells us we don't have to choose.

What In the World?! Together we discuss the attack on critical race theory and what we're actually witnessing: fighting against antiracism and critical consciousness in education, fugitive pedagogy and Brendane's experiences as a science teacher to low income Black and brown students, and how the state is sacrificing children for the sake of the profits of the few.

We may have left the plantation, but the plantation never left us! In this episode Brendane and Alyssa unpack afterlives, the plantation, futurity, and the singularity that continues to shape the present: slavery. In our introduction we take a moment to remember the late Dr. Steven Gregory, Professor of Anthropology and the inaugural Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

What's The Word? Afterlife. Through the work of Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, we give a brief overview of what people mean when they talk about the "afterlives" of slavery (or other systems or structures).

What We're Reading Plantation Futures by Katherine McKittrick. Both of the Daughters had this essay on their exam lists so it was a treat to read! We discuss the ways the plantation is still with us, simultaneously holding the history of racial violence and the key to possibilities for Black life, the co-construction of place and identity, the plot and the plantation, and other kinds of afterlives.

What In the World?! Critiquing the Plantationocene, Border Patrol and Black Asylum Seekers, Missing White Women Syndrome. We talk about how the attention to multispecies and regionalization of the plantation flattens difference and erases Black feminist studies of the plantation, the attention to the object (the whip) and the event (border patrol chasing asylum seekers) serve to distract us from the deeper historical and political pattern, and a brief foray into Missing White Women Syndrome.

In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane unpack questions of fatphobia, anti-blackness, and how that intersects with the discursive. For What's the Word?, we discuss discourse to understand how understandings of the world circulate, of course referencing one of our fave French philosophers: Michel Foucault. Today, we read the essay "Fat, Black, and Ugly: The Semiotic Production of Prodigious Femininities" (2021) by Professor Krystal A. Smalls, which explores several ways fatness and Blackness are discursively constructed as social comorbidities for feminine people and examines how this discourse affects lived experience. Through this lens, we talk about how fatness was wielded against Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Ma'Khia Bryant. In What In the World?! we discuss the latest scandal involving the teen clothing brand Brandy Melville and accusations of anti-blackness and fatphobia, unpack why these -phobias are not specifically about fear (except maybe psychoanalytically!), bias against fat people in the medical system including our own experiences, why commenting on people's bodies is not "caring" for them, Lizzo living her best life, and how loving ourselves and our bodies is a journey.

The revolution will not be sold! We're back with the first episode Season 2! In today's episode, Brendane and Alyssa share what they got up to over the summer break and then jump right into the episode unpacking the philosophical concept of Aesthetics and how it is bound up in politics and power. In the What We're Reading segment, the pair discuss Angela Davis' 1994 essay "Afro Images: Politics, Fashion, and Nostalgia" to think about the ways society refashions the revolutionary past - in this instance how Davis' afro goes from symbol of resistance to fashion statement, evacuating her contribution to Black radicalism through commodification. In What In the World?! Brendane and Alyssa discuss Tiffany's new "About Love" campaign that features Jay-Z, Beyonce, a rarely viewed Basquiat, and a priceless blood diamond. Finally, they touch on the issues and contradictions of the activist-influencer industrial complex through the recent events with the Jessica Natale (formerly @soyouwanttotalkabout on IG) and bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo.

Cultural appropriation is not the sincerest form of flattery! On today's episode, Alyssa and Brendane tackle the slippery concept that is cultural appropriation. In What's The Word? they tackle the age old anthropological question of what is "culture," and explain what cultural appropriation most certainly is not. What We're Reading for this episode is bell hooks' "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance" to unpack how cultural appropriation serves a double duty, simultaneously reinforcing the power and dominance of the appropriator and it diminishing the value of the appropriated by objectifying and exoticizing elements of their way of life. In the What in the World?! segment, we discuss some reader questions and talk about Kahlil Greene's TikTok series “How everything Gen Z does originated with Black people,” white women twerking and saying 'gang gang,' and the new film In The Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Also, the book Alyssa mentions about red beans is actually Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places edited by Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa. Oops!

Thank you all for an incredible year of the podcast! We'll be back in September with a new semester. In the meantime, take care of yourself and each other. Asé

P.S. Our episode art this week was inspired by Sha'Carri Richardson, future Olympian!

Happy Earthstrong to our resident Gemini, Brendane!

This week we're bringing you the mental health and self-care episode. We open up with chatting about what we're doing to take care of ourselves. In our What's the Word? segment, we discuss Dr. Arline Geronimus' concept of weathering and how chronic racial stress impacts our physical and mental health. This week, we're reading Dr. Koritha Mitchell’s essay “Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Form of Self-Care” to unpack strategies of self-care that go beyond bubble baths and facials. Mitchell's work helps us understand why we don't need to have the confidence of a mediocre white man, strategies for mitigating know-your-place aggression (spoiler: it's white people holding themselves to the standards they hold others), and why Black capitalism really isn't going to save us. In our What in the World?! segment, we discuss Naomi Osaka saying "Nah" to the French Open, the way Nikole Hannah-Jones' denial of tenure is a form of know-your-place aggression, and finally the co-opting and commodification of self-care. On the latter topic, Alyssa catches the spirit and leaves us with a WORD, hunny!

CW: rape culture, child sexual abuse in Hollywood (00:36:30-00:39:00)

Abolition is not about your feelings! It's the long awaited episode where we discuss in detail what it means to be and practice PIC (prison-industrial complex) abolition. In our What's the Word? segment, Brendane and Alyssa unpack Michel Foucault's concept of discipline and docile bodies to think about the way power compels us to regulate our bodies and behaviors. Today, we read Mariame Kaba's new book We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. We pulled out three important themes that we felt help us understand how we got to a place where we can't imagine a world without prisons: punishment vs. consequences, transformative justice vs. restorative justice, and safety vs. security. This leads us into conversations about non-reformist reforms, the difference between crime and harm, accountability, gaslighting of Black sexual assault survivors, and the usefulness of hope. In our What in the World?! segment, we discuss the murder of 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant by Ohio police, the ongoing punishment and incarceration of Ashley Diamond, and the cancel culture "crisis" and who really gets cancelled (spoiler: it's not rich celebrities).

CW: Throughout the episode we make reference to sexual assault and perpetrators of sexual harm. We describe the medical and juridical process of rape cases from 00:57:00 to 01:01:00. Please take care of yourself as you need while listening.

So you want to go to grad school?! It's the episode you've been waiting for: Brendane and Alyssa talk all things PhD life while incorporating that critical analysis you know and love. In our What's the Word segment, we discuss the four waves of feminism and why people have got intersectionality à la Kimberlé Crenshaw all the way messed up. For What We're Reading, we discuss the essay “Sitting at the Kitchen Table: Fieldnotes from Women of Color in Anthropology” by Tami Navarro, Bianca Williams, and Attiya Ahmad in order to discuss the Self/Other problematic of anthropology that excludes and alienates women of color the discipline, as well as the particular racialized and gendered experiences that make the academy an unwelcoming place. Finally, in What In the World?! we answer your questions and we spill the tea on our application process, our journey to the PhD, shout out the folks that helped us get here, and why you need friends both inside and outside of the Ivory Tower. We also talk the best advice we received about grad school, and self-care where Alyssa shares how her hot girl semester helped her have a healed girl summer.

Get ready - it's a long one! And also, apologies for the audio - we're still learning our new mics and audio software!

We did more than write, hunny! In this episode, Alyssa & Brendane explain the what happened between them and Dr. Kiona AKA How Not to Travel Like a Basic Bitch and the "multiracial coalition" on Instagram that led to the baby viral YouTube video. It's a conversation on theory and practice, particularly how theory and experience inform how we perform criticism in our everyday lives and how that lens will make our world better. We also address more of the comments and questions we received on posts and in our DMs. Finally, you'll hear a slightly different version of the conversation than is available on YouTube, as we had to record twice!

Stop trying to make Black happen! In this episode, Alyssa & Brendane return to the game Defund Reform Abolish to think discuss and clarify (no pun intended) light skin privilege, the one-drop rule, and white passing. Our What's the (Unclear) Word segment covers the basics of Afropessimism, as well as the difference between economic Afro-pessimism vs Afro-optimism vs. Afrofuturism. In our What We're Reading segment, we discuss the essay "Black Feminist Theory for the Dead and Dying" by Patrice D. Douglass to understand how Black feminist theory and Afropessimism can come together to undo the theorizing of violence against Black women into non-being. Finally, we bring on fellow Daughter of Zora, Chloé Samala Faux, 5th year Anthropology PhD candidate at Columbia University, to help us delve deeper into Afropessmism and its critiques and get to the bottom of 'what is Black?" The conversation gets productive when we debate about whether Meghan Markle is Black, whether it's useful to consider her a non-Black woman of African descent, and the way partus sequitur ventrem (the law of slavery that says "that which is brought forth follows the womb") ultimately does and undoes her. Finally, we remember Breonna Taylor on the one year anniversary of her murder with a moment of silence.

It's a long episode and we still didn't get to everything we wanted to talk about!

By the time you're listening, Alyssa will be in the thick of her PhD qualifying exams - send good vibes and gifTs (though she loves gifs too)!

It's back to our regular programming with just Brendane and Alyssa getting deep into atmospheric anti-blackness, "natural" disasters, and the Texas Deep Freeze. Our What's the Word? is anti-blackness where we explain why the term racism doesn't fully capture the experiences of Black people in the diaspora and how Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophers finessed the category of human. For What We're Reading, we discuss the final chapter of Christina Sharpe's brilliant work In the Wake entitled "The Weather" and get into the importance of Black redaction and annotation in the wake of disaster. In our final segment, What in the World?! (see content warning below), we discuss the 1902 volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique, Hurricane Katrina, the Texas Deep Freeze and why white people are so concerned about Ted Cruz leaving Man's best friend behind. We also address the calls for solidarity among increased anti-Asian violence - TL;DR: Bring the fight to the whites.

CW: We discuss Black suffering as a result of state neglect (00:33:00).

In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane discuss our elders and ancestors of Black feminist anthropology with Associate Professor and President of the Association of Black Anthropologists, Dr. Riché J. Daniel Barnes! Dr. Barnes tells us about how she defines Black feminist anthropology, her journey to and through the discipline, who she thinks of as her unsung Black heroines, and offers advice for the next generation of Black feminist anthropologists. We discuss her book Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood and Community and talk about the importance of care and community in graduate school and academia widely.

It's Black History 365 over here! We're back for Part II of the first season of the podcast keeping it "spicy" talking about racialization, DaniLeigh's problematic song "Yellow Bone," and the intersection of Latinidad with anti-blackness. Alyssa and Brendane explain Louis Althusser and interpellation, Frantz Fanon's "Lived Experience of the Black Man," and discuss an article about "Puerto Rican" youth in New Jersey "appropriating" "blackness" to demonstrate "urban competency," and its contribution to the erasure of actual factual Black people. Here's the kicker: it's the first text in the "What We're Reading" segment not written by a Black person. In our final segment, we chat with PhD candidate Daisy E. Guzman, one of the few Garifuna-Guatemalan women in academia, to dig deep into Latinidad, thinking blackness as indigenous, and proclaim that folks are not "white passing" they are white!

We're back! 

Next week marks the start of ZD 102, the second "semester" of our first season of the podcast! From February to July, we'll be dropping bi-weekly episodes that will continue to challenge and inform. It'll be everything you loved about the first semester, but a little extra because Alyssa and Brendane are where the money reside! 

Speak soon! 

It's our last episode of the ZD Semester! In keeping with the season, Alyssa and Brendane discuss #BlackGirlMagic via the popular Netflix holiday movie Jingle Jangle (SPOILERS)! We discuss the origins of the phrase via CaShawn Thompson and her coinage of the hashtag Black Girls ARE Magic and how it is both celebration of Black women and girls making a way out of no way and critique of a society determined to leave us behind. We read Savannah Shange's incredible essay "Black Girl Ordinary" which teaches us to celebrate the everyday achievements of everyday Black girls. Then, we deep dive into the wonderful world of Journey Jangle - is she really the epitome of the carefree Black girl or is she just another mule for the uplift of a Black man? Listen and find out! Finally, we discuss the problems with Black women having to "save" American democracy - AGAIN.

Listen all the way through for a little surprise that will help you in our book giveaway!

Discussed in this episode:

In this episode, Brendane and Alyssa tackle a fraught subject in the Black community: colorism. We discuss the paper bag test, dating "loophole" women for ascendance vs. unambiguously Black women to legitimize one's blackness. In our What We're Reading segment, we bring things full circle with Alice Walker's essay where she coins the term colorism, addresses why talking about colorism in relationships (platonic and romantic) is political, and the way she gathers all y'all faves! In our What in the World?! segment, we discuss interracial relationships IRL and on TV, Blackish Love on OWN, Jessica Krug and the fetishization of light-skinned women and Latinx identity in academia, "racial ambiguity," skin bleaching, and the image "That Little Girl Was Me" that depicted Kamala Harris walking with the shadow of Ruby Bridges. Hold on to your seats, friends, because things get HOT!

It seems we REALLY missed y'all because it's a long episode! Today we talked neoliberalism and waiting for Biden to make it rain with stimmy checks, Black political strategies and women's participation in political movements through the work of anthropologist Leith Mullings, Alyssa explains for 6 whole ass minutes why Canada the "cultural mosaic" isn't the nice post-racial oasis the country's PR team would have you think, why Black capitalism AKA buying Black won't free us, and why Barack Obama is the quintessential Black liberal. We get into Black liberalism and their abolition-ish ways of watering down Black radical politics, what being cancelled really means, and how Black masc & gender non-conforming folks are harmfully impacted by REAL cancel culture. Finally, Brendane tells us more about abolitionist politics, why we weren't begging y'all to vote like most of your other faves, and how Black folks are already practicing abolition.

Brendane and Alyssa are on Fall Break this week! We'll be back on November 11 with a brand-new episode; in the meantime, listen to our full review of You Belong to Me: Sex, Race, and Murder in the South (2014) and the way the documentary perpetuates the same issue of silencing Black women it purports to solve. CW: sexual abuse, victim blaming, intimate partner violence.

It's all about God's greatest hits today! Alyssa and Brendane kick off the episode with 'Defund Reform Abolish,' before getting into the colonial and religious history and use of the word diaspora. They debate whether the Jamaican immigrant community is a diaspora and get into some African diaspora religions before moving on to the text of the week: Transcendent Kingdom (2020) by Yaa Gyasi, the story of a PhD student dealing with grief, mental illness, and faith - it definitely elicited some strong feelings! Finally, we reveal who the blockheaded dude Brendane was talking about in the last episode and discuss the high - and problematic - standards women must meet in the church. Stay tuned to the end for another little behind-the-scenes of ZD!

In today's episode, Alyssa and Brendane explain why we chose 'Daughters', play a new game called "Defund Reform Abolish," and unpack Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics in conversation with Angela Davis' brilliant essay “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights” who helps us contextualizes the history of birth control movements and eugenics. In our What in the World?! segment, we ask What in the Jordan Peele?! is up with the mass hysterectomies in ICE detention, the erasure of Black immigrants from the immigration outrage, and the neo-Malthusian rhetoric surrounding COVID-19 as a solution to overpopulation and climate change. Plus, we get a little off-topic and start talking about 90 Day Fiance.

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In today's episode, Brendane and Alyssa are doing the Lorde's work! We talk ideal care packages, the history of the fetish (wassup Freud, Marx, and problematic anthropologists!) and contemporary racial/sexual fetishization, the invisibility and hypervisibility of Black women, honor Audre Lorde's Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, PLUS a ZD first: a guest! In our What in the World?! segment, we discuss the sexual harassment allegations in Harvard's anthropology department and speak with Harvard Anthropology PhD candidate Chrystel Oloukoï about the double-edged sword of institutional whisper networks and how misogynoir excludes Black women from the "safety" of these networks.

P.S. Tune in until the end for a little surprise!

The world is a dumpster fire! Today we're talking about what's been helping us get through quarantine, the Anthropocene and the hypocrisy of its hyper-ethics, Black feminist futurity and imagination and environmental racism and the slow violence of redlining, superfund sites, and the water in Flint, MI. We also discuss the value of taking up arms versus taking up community care during and after the revolution, as well as the ethics, politics, and erotics of sharing videos of Black death.