Q&A with Rinaldo Walcott

Carl V. Granger Chair and professor, Department of Africana and American Studies

A: I am a Black Studies scholar. My work focuses on the Black Diaspora, with a special interest in Black Canada. As a part of this work, I have been interested in comparative similarities between national Black formations in the Americas and Europe. This research has led me to explore queer formations, policy, education and a wide range of expressive culture produced by Black people.

My work is foundationally informed by concerns of nationalism, gender, sexuality and multiculturalism. Black feminist, Caribbean Intellectual thought, African American intellectual thought and Black British cultural studies alongside debates in critical theory are the intellectual traditions that my work resides within. My work is concerned with freedom and liberation for Black people wherever they are in the world.

A: I wanted to come to UB because I have always wanted to work in a Black Studies department. The undergraduate program at UB offers me an important opportunity to work with diasporic and transnational Black formations. Additionally, the department’s graduate program in American Studies presents a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of Black Studies and American Studies as both fields influence and simultaneously challenge each other. UB’s Department of Africana and American Studies is a formation that in many ways acknowledges how Black Studies has reshaped American Studies in profound ways. Being at UB allows me to work in two fields that have been important to my entire career.

A: UB has already had an important impact on my work. It is forcing me to think more concretely about the stakes of Black life in the USA beyond the textual and the representative. Living much more closely with and among African Americans means that the stakes of the Black global are more urgently felt in my work as Black people are ambivalently positioned at the center of the US empire. Since, arriving at UB I have been thinking more about the disjuncture between everyday Black people and the figures of representation in for example the national government. The disjuncture is profound and one that requires systematic study.

A: Being department chair is a challenge. What I enjoy most is working with students, staff and other faculty to build on the long legacy of Black Studies and African American Studies at UB.

A: UB is a fascinating school that sits beautifully at the intersection of the urban, the suburban and the rural. Western New York is an interesting region and Buffalo as a border town, so close to Canada and Toronto provides the opportunity for multilayered studies of international experience, rural life, urban life and a panoply of other potentials. “Keep Buffalo a Secret” is a great expression of the possibilities of intellectual life that exists in this region. It is UB’s proximity to this wide-ranging geography and what resides within it that makes UB stand out as a site for fecund intellectual work.