In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with award winning poet Geffrey Davis. Davis has authored two successful books Revising the Storm,   a 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner and most recently Night Angler ,  the recipient of the 2018 James Laughlin Award. Geffrey Davis is currently an Associate Professor at the […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas. I am your host, Dr. Pia Deas. On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, we are sharing an audio recording entitled “ It’s A Commitment,” an audio recording. This audio piece features esteemed dance scholars Dr. Halifu Osumare and Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild. This is part of a larger, artists’ […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas where we celebrate the depth and breadth of Black artistic and intellectual traditions. In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Rashad Shabazz, an Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry within  School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and an affiliate faculty member at the […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas, I am your host, Dr. Pia Deas. In this episode,  I had the pleasure of speaking with scholar and activist, Abdul Alkalimat. In our conversation today, he begins by discussing how influential his family of activists and scholars were on his early development and his lifelong commitment to the freedom […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas. I am your host, Dr. Pia Deas. This week we had the pleasure of speaking with Meg Onli, the current Assistant  Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Please join us for this two-part series. In this episode, we speak to Meg Onli about her life and work […]

On this episode, I am joined by CBC’s research assistant, Jasmine Newton. In this episode, we interviewed architectural designer, poet, and visual artist, Komi Olaf. His visual art has been inspired by asking the question, “What does African heritage look like with technology?” He thus, imagines a world where colonization does not exist and instead […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas, where we celebrate the depth and breadth of the Black artistic and intellectual traditions. I am your host, Dr. Pia Deas. Before we begin, I want to encourage all of our listeners to check out our new and beautifully re-designed website. Our website now gives a much better a more […]

Welcome to Contemporary Black Canvas, where we celebrate the depth and breadth of the Black artistic and intellectual traditions. I am your host, Dr. Pia Deas, in this episode, we interviewed painter, sculptor, and printmaker Wadsworth Jarrell and fashion designer Jae Jarrell. Their works, contributions and founding of the AFRICOBRA Movement has been inspired by […]

I am delighted to welcome you to a new series within the larger Contemporary Black Canvas series. This month in honor of Black history month we are premiering the first two episodes of our new, on-going series, the Black Arts Movement Audio Archive. The Black Arts Movement Audio Archive is the first audio archive of […]

In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking with Tommy “Junebug” Joshua, the founder & visionary behind the North Philadelphia Peace Project. Joshua is a Philadelphia native with deep roots in the rural Greensboro, NC. Strong family ties led to deeply vested communal bonds during his adolescence & well into adulthood that heavily influenced […]

This week on Contemporary Black Canvas we are pleased to present our first co-hosted interview. On this episode, I, Dr. Pia Deas, am joined by our CBC Research Assistant Madison Washington. Stay tuned  to hear our engaging and inspiring interview with Supreme Dow, founder and executive director of the Black Writers’ Museum, located at Vernon […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, I had the pleasure of speaking to Jeri Lynne Johnson, a conductor and the founder of Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra. Jeri Lynne Johnson is deeply committed to building the diversity of the contemporary orchestra and its audience. On this episode, we learn about  her love for classical music […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, I had the pleasure of speaking to J Mase, the III, a Black/trans/queer poet and educator. He is also the founder of AwQuard the first ever trans and queer people of color specific talent agency. He is author of “If I Should Die Under the Knife, Tell My […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, we had the pleasure of interviewing the mixed media visual artist, Amber Robles-Gordon.  She primarily works and is known for her use of found objects and textile to create assemblages, large-scale sculptures and installations.  Her work is representational of her experiences and the paradoxes within the female experience. […]

On this 1/2 hour special edition of Contemporary Black Canvas, we are highlighting the sixth annual BlackStar Film Festival 2017. For this episode, we were delighted to welcome back festival founder Maori Holmes (Episode 5) and independent filmmaker M. Asli Dukan (Episode 10) to talk about this year’s festival. The sixth annual BlackStar Film Festival, held […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, I had the pleasure of interviewing historian Russell Rickford about his most recent book, We Are An African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and The Radical Imagination. Dr. Rickford is an Associate Professor of history at Cornell University. In we are an African People, he traces the development […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, I spoke to LaNeshe Miller-White who, together with Carlo Campbell and Walter Deshields, founded Theatre in the X in 2013. Theatre in the X is an outdoor performance collective that produces and performs several plays in Malcolm X Park in Philadelphia each August. Join us on this episode […]

This week at Contemporary Black Canvas, we are excited to introduce you to Leah Penniman, co-founder with her husband Jonah Penniman, of Soul Fire Farms, their revolutionary, family-owned farm located in upstate New York. Soul Fire Farms is committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. They actively fights institutional racism and food […]

In this week’s episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, we had the pleasure of interviewing scholar GerShun Avilez about his most recent book, Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism. In Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism, Dr. Avilez challenges the belief that the Black Arts Movement was a “dead end” and instead asks “What if it […]

This week on Contemporary Black Canvas we had the pleasure of interviewing physician and poet Irene Mathieu. Irene Mathieu eloquently balances her passionate interests in both the sciences and the humanities. As a child, her parents encouraged the legitimacy and even the fusion of the arts with the sciences and she has truly embodied this […]

On this episode of Contemporary Black Canvas, we had the pleasure of  interviewing filmmaker and founder of Mizan Media Productions, M. Asli Dukan. Asli’s interest in film and speculative fiction began in childhood and has flourished into a vibrant career where she uses film to explore the possibilities of societal transformation. She has written, produced […]

In this week’s episode, we had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Greg Burnham and Marcus Williams, creators of the newly released Tuskegee Heirs comic book series! Tuskegee Heirs focuses on five young, African American pilots following in the aviatic tradition of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. The legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen […]

This week’s episode features a delightful and engaging interview with poet and scholar Evie Shockley. Professor Shockley grew up in Nashville Tennessee and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. She is the author of the poetry collections the Half-Red Sea, The New Black, and the forthcoming poetry collection Semi-Automatic. She has […]