MIZZOU BLACK STUDIES
Fall 2025 Newsletter
BLACK STUDIES (BL_STU) Fall 2025 COURSES
BL_STU 1000/H – Introduction to Black Studies Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM BCC 116 Jirik |
BL_STU 1704/H – Introduction to Black Politics M/W/F 10:00-10:50 AM Strickland Hall 320 Saad |
BL_STU 1705/H - Introduction to Black Studies in Culture Tu/Th 3:30 – 4:45 PM Strickland Hall 209 Kaganda |
BL_STU 1720 - African American Theatre History M/W/F 2:00 – 2:50 PM A&S 233 Gray |
BL_STU 1800 – History of Modern Africa Tu/Th 9:30 – 10:45 AM Switzler Hall 101 Fejzula |
BL_STU 2004 – Topics in Black Studies – Authoritarian Societies, States, and the Prospects for Democracy - Social Science Tu/Th 11:00 – 12:15 PM BCC 116 Fett |
BL_STU 2904 – Black Studies in Slavery and Freedom Tu/Th 12:30 – 1:45 PM Middlebush 133 Jirik |
BL_STU 3024 – Black Diaspora Women and Reproductive Justice Internet Atuhura |
BL_STU 3200 – Black Freedom Movement, 1955 – 1973 M/W/F 1:00 – 1:50 PM Physics Bldg 104 Mack |
BL_STU 3400/WI - Survey of African American Literature, Beginnings to 1900 Internet Hoberek |
*BL_STU 4005 - Topics in Black Studies – History of Policing in the U.S. M/W/F 10:00 – 10:50 AM Tate Hall 110 Mack |
*BL_STU 4020 - Studies in Black Feminist Thought Tu 11:00 – 12:50 PM Strickland Hall 324 Carney |
BL_STU 4210 - African American Religion M/W/F 9:00 – 9:50 AM A&S 203 McLaughlin |
BL_STU 4300 - Black Children, Youth, and Families Tu/Th 2:00 – 3:15 PM Schlundt Hall 201 Landor |
BL_STU 4480 - Major African Diaspora Women Writers Tu/Th 12:30 – 1:45 PM Strickland Hall 316 Buckner |
BL_STU 4975 – Black Studies Internship TBA ARRANGED Faculty |
BL_STU 4977 – Black Studies Capstone TBA ARRANGED Faculty |
Core course requirements are in bold.
*Indicates graduate option available.
Department News and Highlights
Dr. Michael Jirik had his article “Amherst College and Slavery: History and Meaning” published in The New England Quarterly in June. In addition to working on other writing projects, this fall he will be teaching Black Studies in Slavery and Freedom and Introduction to Black Studies. Dr. Jirik’s article can be accessed here: Amherst College and Slavery: History and Meaning | The New England Quarterly | MIT Press
Dr. Anna Fett spent two weeks working through multiple archival collections at the University of Southampton in Southampton, England. This research provided vital non-US sources to enhance the transnational historical lens used in her first book project. She also enjoyed touring local areas during the weekend, including a day trip through the picturesque Cotswolds.
Dr. Dorothy Atuhura had her article “Competence-based language curricula: implementation challenges in Africa,” co-written with Dr. Rebecca Nambi in ELT Journal. Drs. Atuhura and Nambi’s article examines the real-life adaptive challenges secondary school teachers of English in Uganda face while implementing the 2020 English language competence-based curriculum innovation. They illustrate the universality of challenges teachers face and are likely to face when implementing competence-based curricula in Sub-Saharan Africa and the wider global south, where the teaching and learning of English is premised on facilitating the acquisition of the English language for meaningful interaction. The article can be accessed here.
Dr. Atuhura also participated as a member of a Canadian–Ugandan core research team on a two-year, SSHRC/NFRF-funded, Feminist Participatory Action Research project with adolescent mothers in Uganda (ages 13-18) impacted by the COVID-19 “shadow pandemic” of teenage pregnancies. Together, the Academic Research Team Members and the young mothers co-designed an interdisciplinary intervention to support their continued education, vocational training, and long-term futures.
Dr. Willie Mack was interviewed by Dr. Gerald Horne on the Freedom Now! radio show on Los Angeles’ KPFK Pacifica Radio on July 5, 2025. The interview focused on Dr. Mack’s recent scholarship including his forthcoming book, With Friends Like These: Transnational Carceral Regimes and Punitive Anti-communism in New York City and Haiti (UVA Press, August 2026) and the current political moment both here in the U.S. and in Haiti. An archive of the interview can be found here.
Dr. Mack was also able to attend the Migration Scholars Collaborative writing retreat in Tepoztlán, Mexico, in July. During the weeklong retreat, Dr. Mack was able to work on his monograph manuscript and work on a chapter for his upcoming anthology, Dark Waters: Centering Black Experiences in U.S. Immigration History (UNC Press, September 2026), co-edited with Dr. Llana Barber.
NEWS & UPDATES
Welcome to the new John Galliher Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace Studies and Black Studies Radwa Saad. Dr. Saad’s research interests include civil-military relations, Black transnationalism, and regional integration and security alliances in Africa. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled What Are We Fighting For? Military Conscription, Resistance, and Citizenship in Egypt, which examines how state-societal contracts and understandings of citizenship are (re)negotiated through resistance to military conscription practices. Her research has been supported by the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the African Leadership Centre. She also serves as Publications Manager at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and as a researcher at the Gender and Security Sector Lab. She holds a PhD from Cornell University and an MSc from King’s College, London.
Mizzou Black Studies alum Ebony Reed is the co-author of Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap. Ebony is a seasoned journalist and media leader who has led news coverage and business operations at news organizations across the country. She is the chief strategy officer at the Marshall Project, a news outlet focused on the justice system, and has taught at the Yale School of Management. She has also worked at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the Detroit News, the Associated Press, Boston Business Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. In Cleveland, she covered public schools and documented public education’s inequities. The Investigative Reporters & Editors organization recognized her examination of how social promotion impacted the district’s majority Black and brown students. At the Detroit News, she managed the local coverage during the 2008 economic crisis. At the Wall Street Journal, she held the role of New Audiences & Community Chief. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in Black Studies from the University of Missouri–Columbia, and a Master of Arts in journalism with a concentration in media management. Ebony is based in Kansas City, Mo., and also sits on the KCUR, Kansas City NPR affiliate, community board.
Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap is a sweeping, narrative history of Black wealth and the economic discrimination embedded in America’s financial system.
The early 2020s will long be known as a period of racial reflection. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans of all backgrounds joined together in historic demonstrations in the streets, discussions in the workplace, and conversations at home about the financial gaps that remain between white and Black Americans. This deeply investigated book shows the scores of setbacks that have held the Black-white wealth gap in place—from enslavement to redlining to banking discrimination—and, ultimately, the reversals that occurred in the mid-2020s as the push for racial equity became a polarized political debate.
Fifteen Cents on the Dollar follows the lives of four Black Millennial professionals and a banking company founded with the stated mission of closing the Black-white wealth gap. That company, known as Greenwood, a reference to the historic Black Wall Street district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, generated immense excitement and hope among people looking for new ways of business that might lead to greater equity. But the twists and turns of Greenwood’s journey also raise tough questions about what equality really means.
Seasoned journalist-academics Louise Story and Ebony Reed present a nuanced portrait of Greenwood’s founders—the entertainment executive Ryan Glover; the Grammy-winning rapper Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike; and the Civil Rights leader and two-term Atlanta mayor, Andrew Young—along with new revelations about their lives, careers, and families going back to the Civil War. Equally engaging are the stories of the lesser-known individuals—a female tech employee from rural North Carolina trying to make it in a big city; a rising leader at the NAACP whose father is in prison; an owner of a BBQ stand in Atlanta fighting to keep his home; and a Black man in a biracial marriage grappling with his roots when his father is shot by the police.
In chronicling these staggering injustices, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar shows why so little progress has been made on the wealth gap and provides insights Americans should consider if they want lasting change.
See Ebony’s interview on her new book from MSNBC’s Morning Joe here.
2025 Black Studies Department Conference, October 15-16, “Navigating Anti-Black Racism and Nativism: Black Immigrants and the Right to the Nation.”
Keynote speaker, Dr. Regine O. Jackson, Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media, and Arts Division, Morehouse College.
Dr. Jackson is a professor of sociology and dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media, and Arts Division at Morehouse College.
She has received grants and awards from the American Sociological Association, Social Science Research Council, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Ford Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Prior to coming to Morehouse, she served as Assistant Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives at Agnes Scott College. She also has had faculty leadership roles at Agnes Scott, including Sociology & Anthropology Department Chair, Faculty Coordinator of Global Learning, co-chairing a pandemic instructional planning task force, participating in a college-wide strategic planning committee, serving as an officer on the Faculty Executive Committee, and chairing the Campus Life Committee, as well as leadership appointments at Emory University.
With an undergraduate degree from Brown University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Dr. Jackson continues to be an active scholar in the areas of Haitian migration and diaspora, race and ethnicity, American immigration, spatial inequality, and global learning. Her work includes a book, Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora, with another on the way (Boston Haitians: Navigating Race, Place, and Belonging in a Majority-Minority City) under contract and numerous solo- and co-authored publications in journals and books. Dr. Jackson’s research is complemented by public scholarship, commentary, faculty development workshops and invited presentations that place her in high demand as a speaker.
Email Dr. Willie Mack for the conference program or visit https://blackstudies.missouri.edu
Please join us at the annual Black Studies & Peace Studies Fall 2025 Fair!
Contact Dr. Anna Fett for more information.
Online access to the Walter Daniel Library Catalog @ Black Studies
The Black Studies Department’s Walter Daniel Library Catalog is available online. You can access the catalogue here.
SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
The annual submission deadlines are November 12 and March 12
Charles Sampson Scholarship in Public Affairs and Black Studies – for research support up to $500.
James S. Rollins Slavery Atonement Scholarship – for research support up to $1,000.
Mary Crawford King and Louis King Scholarship – for research support up to $1,000 when participating in an MU study abroad program with an interest in studying people of African descent.
BLACK STUDIES: REFER A FRIEND, PASS THE WORD
Do you know anyone who should be getting this newsletter? Anyone you think needs to know more about Black Studies? Or would benefit from knowing more? Please feel free to forward this newsletter and ask the person to reach out to Dr. Mack to be put on the distribution list. Black Studies Matters! Pass it on. And if you wish to unsubscribe (we think that’s a mistake, but we understand), please let Dr. Mack know as well.
DO YOU NEED SUPPORT? ADVICE? ADVISING?
RESOURCE ASSISTANCE?
Whatever you need, we have you covered. See the various advising, faculty, and support offices below. And reach out before things become complicated; we truly are here to help.
MIZZOU BLACK STUDIES
Undergraduate Advisor: Kibby Smith
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Dr. Willie Mack
Department Administration and Business Manager: Shawn Hall
Department Chair: Dr. Daive Dunkley
MIZZOU RESOURCE CENTERS and OFFICES
|
|