It was a pleasure to speak with Roopika Risam and Mary Churchill, co-hosts of the Rocking the Academy podcast, to discuss The Blackademic Life, academic novels, and the current state of higher education.
Rocking the Academy
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Category Archives: Academic Films
The Blackademic Life – Coming soon!
It’s really real now. Thank you to all of you who have pre-ordered the book and waited patiently for the roll-out. Pre-ordered copies should start shipping by the end of the week. Also, it looks like the Kindle price has been temporarily lowered, so you should jump on that if you feel so inclined.
I’ll be reading at McNally Jackson Books in SoHo on November 14, with my CUNY colleague Dr. Debarati Biswas. Books will be available at the reading! RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-blackademic-life-tickets-64987959737
The Blackademic Life
The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual
Northwestern University Press
October 15, 2019
http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/blackademic-life
Stay tuned for a fall event schedule, coming soon.
#TheBlackademicLife
Revisiting Racism On Campus In John Singleton’s “Higher Learning”
Laurence Fishburne as Professor Maurice Phipps in “Higher Learning”
In my first article for The North Star I wrote about John Singleton’s college film Higher Learning and how it is relevant to current conversations about race and higher education.
“Revisiting Racism On Campus In John Singleton’s ‘Higher Learning.”
(The North Star is a pay-walled publication, but they do offer a free trial option.)
John Singleton’s “Higher Learning”
Laurence Fishburne, Omar Epps, and Ice Cube in HIGHER LEARNING (1995)
I wrote this back in 2010 as part of an article on academic films for The GC Advocate. I’m reposting this (lightly revised) excerpt in memory of John Singleton who passed away today at age 51 after suffering a stroke.
If you haven’t seen Higher Learning in a while, it’s worth another look. The film captures so many topics in higher education that have only grown more prominent in the subsequent years.
Peace to John Singleton. Condolences to all who knew and loved him.
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Higher Learning, directed by Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton, is an ensemble drama set in the fictional Columbus University in California. The film takes an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to campus issues including such hot button topics as alcoholism, date rape, homosexuality, racial balkanization, affirmative action, and the exploitation of college athletes. Ice Cube’s performance as the black militant Fudge (replete with Afro and fist-pick) was especially inspired. Fudge is a proud autodidact who thumbs his nose at the educational establishment and embraces knowledge as a tool of liberation rather than a ticket to a job on the white man’s plantation. In many ways his depiction is, right or wrong, a representation of the chip-on-their-shoulder arrogance that some attribute to black students on majority white college campuses in the affirmative action era. Fudge revels in the role, and pushes the envelope by antagonizing his white classmates with all night parties, and lecturing the young track star Malik Williams (Omar Epps) on how he is being exploited for his athletic talents. Michael Rapaport plays an awkward white kid from Idaho who is out of his depths at the school and gets taken in by Neo-Nazis who teach him of his true identity as a white male victim of multiculturalism run amok. The shooting spree that ensues hits a little too close to home given the spate of recent incidents of gun violence on college campuses and beyond. But then again, it’s just another example of John Singleton having his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the nation.
See the rest of the list at “The University on Screen: The Top 10 Academic Films”
THE BLACKADEMIC LIFE: THE BLOG 