This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.
Today’s conversation is with Patrice Green, Curator for African American and African Diasporic Collections at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Green holds master’s degrees in Public History and Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina, with training in museums and material culture, historic preservation, and archives and preservation management. Her interests include archival representation, knowledge justice, and Black history and culture. Additionally, her work has allowed her to develop and steward collections that center Black life, enhance critical teaching and learning experiences, and cultivate Black memory. In this conversation, we discuss the significance of public history, the relationship between storytelling and curation, and how memory and culture shape Black Studies archive work.