Hope this finds you safe and warm. I am writing to update our invite to you and your students. AFST and SEEK look forward to having you join us to join for a roundtable discussion on the significance of Black History Month, now in its 100th year, and what opportunities holding the space presents for the future. Our discussion will be held on Feb. 18, 2026 at 4 :30 PM in RO 230 and via Zoom. To watch online please register at QCBHM100. Please share our flier with your colleagues and students. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Our panelists include:

Regina N Bradley "The Red Clay Scholar" author of Chronicling Stankonia, An OutKast Reader, Boondock Kollage ,That's the Joint! the Hip Hop Studies Reader . Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South. She is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal, co-director of the Hip Hop Studies Consortium at Georgia State University, and co-host of the critically acclaimed southern hip hop podcast Bottom of the Map with music journalist Christina Lee. Dr. Bradley is also an alumna Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow (Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Spring 2016).

Stefan Bradley author of If We Don’t Get It: A People’s History of Ferguson. Dr. Stefan M. Bradley is the Charles Hamilton Houston '15 Professor of Black Studies and History at Amherst College and the author of two award-winning books, Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League and Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s.

As a scholar grounded in community work, Bradley is a respected voice and thought leader in African American history and modern-day American race relations. He has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, BET, the Oprah Winfrey Network, the History Channel, and more.

Kenton Rambsy is a literary scholar and visualization specialist whose work bridges African American literature and data science. An Associate Professor of African American literature at Howard University and data storytelling specialist with the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics (CADSA), Rambsy conducts data-driven research on Black literature, music, and culture. His projects explore literary geo-tagging and the use of visualization to map themes, settings, and stylistic shifts in African American short fiction and Hip Hop. He is the author of The Geographies of African American Short Stories (2022), #TheJayZMixtape (2018), and Lost in the City (2019). More broadly, Rambsy is committed to developing innovative ways of interpreting and visualizing Black cultural and heritage materials across Black Studies to make them more accessible and widely understood. His forthcoming book, One Black Writer at a Time, co-authored with his older brother, Howard Rambsy II, will be published by Bloomsbury Press in Fall 2026.

Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is the founding executive director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice and a professor of communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of the award-winning radio show Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA, 88.9 FM and the recent recipient of the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence, for her outstanding reporting on the impact racial reckoning has had in helping to close social/racial wealth gap for Black people in America. She was recently selected by The Daily Record as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women of 2022 (an honor that she also received in 2020) and by Black Girls Vote as a 2022 honoree for its “Ladies & Politics” series. Her radio show, Today With Dr. Kaye, received both the 2022 Chesapeake Associated Press Award for Best in Show and for Best Radio Talk Show; and, the Second Place Award for Outstanding Editorial or Commentary.

She is the author of four books, including RaceBrave: new and selected works; Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis, which received both the 2015 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2014 Letitia Woods Brown Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians; and Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America. She is a K-12 master teacher in African American history; an award-winning curriculum writer and lesson plan developer; and an award-winning former Baltimore City middle school teacher.

Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is also the sitting president of ASALH, the founders of Black History Month.

Ytasha L. Womack is an award-winning author, filmmaker, independent scholar, and dance therapist. She is a leading expert on Afrofuturism and lectures on the imagination and its applications across the world. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago Review Press) is the leading primer on the subject and is taught in colleges and universities. Afrofuturism is also a Locus Awards Nonfiction Finalist and inspired the Afrofuturism themed restaurant Bronze in Washington D.C. She is featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture’s Afrofuturism exhibit running through February 24. She is also featured in the Smithsonian’s documentary Afrofuturism: An Origin Story. She was a co-curator for Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Afrofuturism Festival, a national event which includes music showcases, dance, workshops, and panels. She is an inaugural resident with Black Rock Senegal helmed by celebrated artist Kehinde Wiley.

Sincerely,

Natanya Duncan, PhD

Director, QC Africana Studies

Associate Professor of History

“Black intellectual practice not as an approach to omniscience but as a perpetual desire activated in community as community.”

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

“The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse."

Nikole Hannah-Jones

"Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy." Elizabeth Fox-Genovese