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About Brittney Edmonds

I'm an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specialize in 20th and 21st century African American Literature and Culture with a special interest in Black Humor Studies.

Brittney Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specialize in 20th and 21st century African American Literature and Culture with a special interest in Black Humor Studies. Read more about my work at brittneymichelleedmonds.com.

Brittney's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Brittney:

African American Studies May 1, 2023

Suddenly We

Evie Shockley

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In her new poetry collection Suddenly We (Wesleyan UP, 2023), Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious …
African American Studies April 12, 2023

Deadpan

The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression

Tina Post

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production.  Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression …
Literary Studies March 26, 2023

Decolonizing Memory

Algeria and the Politics of Testimony

Jill Jarvis

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and the Politics of Testimony (Duke UP, 2021), Jill Jarvis examines the crucial role that writers and artists have played in cultivating historical memory and nurturing political resistance …
African American Studies December 16, 2022

Liberty Road

Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism

Gregory Smithsimon

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between …
Literary Studies October 11, 2022

Criticism and Politics

A Polemical Introduction

Bruce Robbins

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the Culture Wars …
African American Studies August 22, 2022

The Matter of Black Living

The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880-1930

Autumn Womack

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
As the nineteenth century came to a close and questions concerning the future of African American life reached a fever pitch, many social scientists and reformers approached post-emancipation Black life …
African American Studies August 11, 2022

Or, on Being the Other Woman

Simone White

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In or, on being the other woman (Duke UP, 2022), Simone White considers the dynamics of contemporary black feminist life. Throughout this book-length poem, White writes through a hybrid of …
African American Studies July 29, 2022

Insurrection

Rebellion, Civil Rights, and the Paradoxical State of Black Citizenship

Hawa Allan

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
The little-known and under-studied 1807 Insurrection Act was passed to give the president the ability to deploy federal military forces to fend off lawlessness and rebellion, but it soon became …
American Studies July 13, 2022

The Future of Decline

Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits

Jed Esty

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
As the US becomes a second-place nation, can it shed the superpower nostalgia that still haunts the UK? The debate over the US's fading hegemony has raged and sputtered for …
African American Studies July 4, 2022

Ugly Freedoms

Elisabeth R. Anker

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In Ugly Freedoms (Duke UP, 2022), Elisabeth R. Anker reckons with the complex legacy of freedom offered by liberal American democracy, outlining how the emphasis of individual liberty has always been …
African American Studies June 6, 2022

Outside Literary Studies

Black Criticism and the University

Andy Hines

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America.  In Outside …
African American Studies June 2, 2022

Dreaming the Present

Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement

Irvin J. Hunt

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In their darkest hours over the course of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ella Baker, George Schuyler, and Fannie Lou Hamer gathered hundreds across the United States …
African American Studies May 27, 2022

There's a Disco Ball Between Us

A Theory of Black Gay Life

Jafari S. Allen

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what …
African American Studies May 5, 2022

Elite Capture

How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little …
African American Studies April 21, 2022

The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism

Joseph Darda

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
What if, Joseph Darda asks, our desire to solve racism--with science, civil rights, antiracist literature, integration, and color blindness--has entrenched it further? In The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism (Stanford …
African American Studies April 12, 2022

Played Out

The Race Man in 21st Century Satire

Brandon J. Manning

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In this episode, Dr. Brandon J. Manning talks about his most recent book, Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire (Rutgers UP, 2022). Here's a short description: through contemporary …
African American Studies March 4, 2022

Phenomenal Blackness

Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory

Mark Christian Thompson

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
Mark Christian Thompson's book, Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2022) examines the changing interdisciplinary investments of key mid-century African American writers and thinkers, showing how their investments …
African American Studies January 21, 2022

Black Gathering

Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life

Sarah Jane Cervenak

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life (Duke UP, 2021), Dr. Sarah Jane Cervenak engages with Black artists and writers who create alternative spaces for Black people to gather free from …
African American Studies December 15, 2021

To Make Negro Literature

Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship

Elizabeth McHenry

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship (Duke UP 2021), Elizabeth McHenry locates a hidden chapter in the history of Black literature at the turn of …
African American Studies November 3, 2021

Black Age

Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life

Habiba Ibrahim

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time and time again, excuses for …
African American Studies October 14, 2021

The Other Side of Terror

Black Women and the Culture of US Empire

Erica R. Edwards

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
Dr. Erica R. Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire (New York University, 2021) reveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US …