Standpoints

Community building serves as a bridge to the collectivity of all Black womxn in and outside of the academy. In our final episode of the season, co-hosts Jenaya Amore and Dr. Andrea Baldwin engage in conversation with Producing Collaborator Shalonda Ingram about the importance of relationality between individuals and organizations which informs how mentoring is (re)defined and practiced.
Shalonda Ingram is a social omnipreneur based in the D.C. area. They are the founder of Born Brown: All Rights Reserved and Nursha Project. They also are a Place-maker at the Church of the Holy City in D.C. and Delaware.

"Womanist is to feminist, as purple is to lavender." Following Alice Walker's sentiment, this episode explores and delves into the intricacies of religion and spirituality for Black women during the 18th century. Co-hosts of Standpoints Jenaya Amore and Dr. Andrea Baldwin join in conversation with Dr. Jaimie Crumley to discuss her research and the mentoring impacts of her personal and professional trajectory.
Dr. Jaimie Crumley is an Assistant Professor in the Gender and Ethnic Studies Divisions with the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at the University of Utah.

In an effort to resist multiple oppressions across various spaces, Black women academics and graduate student often create alternative spaces to center themselves within the academy. In this episode co-hosts Dr. Andrea Baldwin and Jenaya Amore speak with co founders of the North Star Collective, Dr. Tatiana Cruz and Dr. Kamille Gentles-Peart.

Dr. Cruz is an Assistant Professor and Interdisciplinary Program Director of Africana Studies at Simmons University. Dr. Gentles-Peart is a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Roger Williams University.

Guess who's in the hot seat? This episode highlights the long-standing co-mentoring relationship between co-host Dr. Andrea Baldwin and friend of the show, Dr. Nana Brantuo. Jenaya Amore, co-host of Standpoints, interviews both phenomenal scholars on their perspectives of community care and praxis within their pedagogy. Dr. Andrea N. Baldwin is an associate professor of gender and ethnic studies at the School for Cultural and Social Transformation at the University of Utah. Dr. Nana Brantuo is an interdisciplinary social scientist and founder of Diaspora Praxis, LLC.

Within the African diaspora, dance continues to serve as a medium for cultural and self expression amongst BIPOC communities. Today's guest uses dance as a pedagogical tool to combine the performing arts and education to reconnect the (dis)embodied experience of being in the academic space. Co-host Jenaya Amore speaks with Shani Collins and Truth Hunter, about Black feminisms and how this theory informs their experiences as artists and teachers in and outside of the classroom. Shani Collins is an Associate Professor of Dance at Connecticut College. Truth Hunter is a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut.

In this episode, co-hosts Jenaya Amore and Andrea Baldwin engages in a conversation with Kimberly Clark surrounding her leadership within a director role at Virginia Tech. From this dialogue, we learn how mentoring includes not only serving as a buffer, but intentionally centering and caring for students' holistic selves against racial oppression at predominantly white institutions. Kimberly Clark is the director of the Black Cultural Center at Virginia Tech.

Mentorship has provided Black women the agency to define their own success while supported by those who have undergone this arduous journey. Particularly, within PWIs, co-mentorship and community have served as a homeplace and solace for Black women while navigating such spaces. Co-hosts Dr. Andrea Baldwin and Jenaya Amore discuss the impact of mentoring on their academic trajectory and personal lives.  

In this episode, we explore the intersections of race and gender within sports. The aftermath of Brittany Griner’s detainment in Russia allude to pivotal issues of systemic racial injustice that continues to impact the lives of Black athletes. The performance of Black athletes are recognized but the industry ignores their lived experiences that intersect with mistreatment, discrimination and oppressive factors.

Hosts Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette are in conversation with Dr. Letisha Brown and Deshon Foxx. Deshon is a PhD student in Sociology at Virginia Tech. He received his B.A. from UCONN and his research focuses on the intersections of sports, race, education, educational law and culture. Dr. Letisha Brown is an assistant professor in Sociology and a Black feminist sociologist. She studies race and racism, the sociology of sport and Black girlhoods.

In this episode, we examine the ways in which Black women graduates have navigated predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Black feminists for decades have written about this issue and how they are simultaneously invisible yet hypervisible in spaces that are often discriminatory. Host Andrea Baldwin engages in a dialogue with two doctoral candidates Dr. Leslie Roberston Foncette and Dr. Jariah Strozier about their experiences within the academy. Dr. Foncette is a bilingual psychotherapist and gender scholar. Her research focuses on Caribbean and Black diaspora gender systems and factors influencing health and decision making for adolescent girls and women. Dr. Strozier is a public health researcher and her dissertation topic focuses on Black women’s health and the pathologization of Black women’s bodies in the medical space.

The Broke/Rich Paradigm is the perception that as educated Black women with relatively good jobs, that is “the ones who have made it,” we should be doing better; we should be able to afford a lifestyle equivalent to the cultural expectation surrounding a certain level of education or professional attainment.  But the reality is often that not only have Black women faced greater obstacles in the attainment of this social and financial status, but now having achieved some success, responsibilities and expectations with regard to the unmet needs of one's family, friends, and community can conspire to ensure that the rewards of success are often not available to enjoy.

Host Andrea Baldwin teases out the nuances of the "Broke/Rich Paradigm" in conversation with Dr. Nana Brantuo and Jazmin Pichardo. Dr. Brantuo is an independent scholar, researcher, and a policy advocate and strategist. She is also an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University. Jazmin Pichardo is the Assistant Director of Diversity Training and Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a doctoral student in the Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education program there.

In this episode, we discuss the migration of Caribbean women, and consider the impact of movement upon the individual, the diaspora, and upon the culture of both home and destination countries.

Hosts Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette are in conversation with Sandra Griffith and Dr. Natasha Kay Mortley. Sandra is a seasonal migrant who has traveled to the U.S. and Canada, and she is Andrea's mother.  Dr. Mortley is a Lecturer and Research Specialist with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies Regional Coordinating Office at University of the West Indies.

In this episode, we explore intimacy, sexual agency, and sexual positivity for Black women in western societies. Because of its private and personal nature, and also due to its complex entanglement with morality, biology, and the unique historical arc of dark-skinned peoples in the Americas, Black sexuality can be fraught and difficult to navigate, and often distinctly so for women of color. 

In an attempt to explore the ways in which Black women can unlearn misinformation and equip themselves with the necessary tools to cultivate understanding of their sexuality and to develop healthy relationships with their bodies, hosts Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette speak with Dr. Leslie Roberston Foncette, a bilingual psychotherapist and mental health consultant, and Janice Leonard, a Licensed Professional Counselor and Sex Therapist.

Love can be romantic, platonic, familial, even collegial. It is often unconditional, but where Black love resides it is always political. In this episode, we discuss the spectrum of love's manifestation across Black relationships. Loving oneself or others while Black is an act of rebellion for those whose bodies are racially marked and held outside of society, and at times deemed unloveable. 

Hosts Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette invite Gerlyn Murrell and Kimberly Williams into conversation about the spectrum of Black love. Gerlyn Murrell is a doctoral candidate in the department of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Kimberly Williams is a University of Florida Graduate candidate in English.

In this episode we address the topic of Black women’s birth equity, birth justice and maternal health.  This topic is extremely timely with the recently leaked 1st draft of the Supreme court’s ruling which purports to overturn the 40 plus year precedent in Roe Vs. Wade which makes abortion in the US legal.  Even with Roe still law of the land Black women are more likely than women of all other races to experience reproductive inequities.  They are more likely to seek abortion services,  they are more likely to die during and as a consequence of child birth, they are more likely to have their children taken away by the state and much much more. Today we will be discussing the long standing historical reasons for these inequities, what birthing equity practitioners are doing in our communities to address these inequities and talk about what the future holds for Black women in a projected post-Roe United states.

For this conversation, host Andrea Baldwin is joined by Dr. Natalie Cook and Zuleka Woods. Dr. Cook is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Virginia Tech, she is a critical educator, transformative evaluator and researcher, as well as a culturally-affirming full-spectrum doula. Dr Cook co-facilitated a week-long module in Making All Black Lives Matter (MABLM) course that I co-taught with Dr. Shannon Bell in the spring semester 2022. The MABLM course has been informing a special series of the standpoints podcast, for which this episode is one.  This series is made possible in part by a  collaborative grant funded by the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.

A big part of loving our blackness is our attention to healing not only for ourselves but for our communities.  As Black people we recognize how living in an anti-black world we consistently experience trauma and loss.  Any yet because we are consistently attending to the immediacy of our physical and financial needs and the needs of others we struggle to identify and address the traumas we experience. In this episode we will be addressing black healing, why is talking about Black healing important, what does this healing look like, understanding that Black folks are not a monolith,  and what are some healing practices Black folks can engage in and be mindful of as a community?

Hosts Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette are joined in conversation by Kimberly Williams and Dr. Portia Moore. Dr. Moore is the Department Head and Assistant Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Florida in the School of Art and Art History. Kimberly is a University of Florida Graduate candidate in English.

In this episode Andrea Baldwin and Trichia Cadette talk with Dr. Anthony Kwame Harrison and Ocqua Gerlyn Murrell about creating and publishing a collection of student essays on Black Feminism as a course objective, and about making Black Feminist interventions in academic, activist, and entrepreneurial spaces.