Conversations in Black Freedom Studies: Food, Life & Leisure

About this event
VIRTUAL
Join the virtual conversation as scholars Blair LM Kelley (Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class), Ava Purkiss (Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America), Theresa Runstedtler (Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA), and Bobby J. Smith II (Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement) discuss the everyday lives of Black people through popular culture, food, and leisure activities.
PANELISTS
Theresa Runstedtler, Ph.D. is a scholar of African American history at American University whose research examines Black popular culture, with a particular focus on the intersection of race, masculinity, labor, and sport. Her newest book, the critically acclaimed Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA examines how African American players transformed the professional hoops game, both on and off the court. Dr. Runstedtler has published scholarly articles in the Radical History Review, the Journal of World History, American Studies, the Journal of American Ethnic History, the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, the Journal of Women’s History, and other publications. Professor Runstedtler offers courses on race and popular culture and African American history.
Dr. Bobby J. Smith II is an interdisciplinary scholar of the African American agricultural and food experience. Trained as a sociologist, with a background in agricultural economics, Dr. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with affiliations in the Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition and the Center for Social & Behavioral Science. Dr. Smith is the author of Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. Food Power Politics is the inaugural book of the newly launched Black Food Justice Series at UNC Press. Thinking with multiple disciplines including African American Studies, critical food studies, and agricultural science, Food Power Politics brings into focus how food was used as a weapon against African Americans during the civil rights movement in Mississippi, and how they fought back, creating their own food programs and systems.
Ava Purkiss | University of Michigan
Ava Purkiss’s research and teaching at the University of Michigan lie at the intersection of race, gender, health, and the body. Her book, Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America, explores how African American women used physical exercise to express both literal and figurative fitness for citizenship. Her work places Black women squarely within the history of American fitness culture and challenges assumptions about Black women’s mobility, physicality, and corporality. Purkiss is at work on a second research project on race and gynecology in the 20th century. She is the recipient of the 2017 Organization of American Historians Lerner-Scott Prize for best dissertation in U.S. women’s history and the 2018 Letitia Woods Brown prize for best article in African American women’s history from the Association of Black Women Historians.
ABOUT CONVERSATIONS IN BLACK FREEDOM STUDIES |
The founding curators of this series, Professors Jeanne Theoharis (Brooklyn College/CUNY) and Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), introduced a new paradigm that challenged the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture and chronology of Civil Rights historiography. Jeanne Theoharis continues in her role and is joined by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine (Wayne State University) ) as co-curator. Komozi Woodard continues to advise the series from an emeritus position. Discussions take place on the first Thursday of each month.
Learn more: www.blackfreedomstudies.org"

[@happygucci5094]

I hope the Schonburg do a series on Dr Gerald Horne and the Black Radical Left and Liberation Struggles. He is doing outstanding work.

[@maroonrebel]

Jah & Jahes love. I very much enjoyed these presentations about Black Freedom, Food and Life, and Leisure. I wish that Dr. Breze Harper who spearheaded the Sistah Vegan movement had been invited. And, I also feel that there should have been some kind of discussion about Ayiti, the birthplace of Black Freedom, and how the newly freed Blacks enjoyed their lives. Blessed love.#1804#Ayiti#ToutMounseMoun#AbolishCPS#AbolishPoverty#DefundFosterCare#ProChoice#RawVeganforLIfe#HRESE40NOW#220YearsFREE#FreeAyiti#HandsOffAyiti