14:06:19 Yes, I think you're good.
14:06:23 Okay, great.
14:06:25 Thank you.
14:06:28 All right.
14:06:28 Okay, so Today is March 23 2021.
14:06:35 And we are having an interview with Professor Julius Scott, as part of the 15th anniversary oral history project.
14:06:45 As the haze here Abdullah, and myself Stephen Ward are pleased to be having this conversation with the Julius so welcome.
14:06:53 Thank you very much.
14:06:55 Welcome everybody.
14:06:59 Glad to be with you.
14:07:00 Thank you. Likewise. We'd like to begin by asking you to please tell us a bit about your background and your path and led you to cast including when exactly you arrived in cast the Center for American and African Studies.
14:07:15 I'm okay. I'm
14:07:19 okay.
14:07:22 okay uh let's see how should I do this.
14:07:26 Before I came to Michigan.
14:07:31 I taught at Duke University, could you ever I went to graduate school.
14:07:36 And basically, I was.
14:07:40 I hadn't finished my book yet. And so, it turned out that the chair, the chair called me out his house and we talked about it, and it was pretty clear that as we moved on.
14:07:54 I was going to be moved away from Duke.
14:07:58 And I had a friend who taught at Michigan at the time, I had been offered a job at Michigan, a couple of years prior to that, and so people remembered me from the process I had already gone through so I didn't didn't really have to go through quite a,
14:08:13 quite as quite as much of a process again as I did the first time and again, it's just another part of the story that this, This was Elsa Barclay Brown, who's a black women's history and who teaches now at the University of Maryland.
14:08:33 But at that time, she taught here at Michigan. And she was going away for a year. As a matter of fact, he was going to Maryland, to teach for a year before she got her permanent job there.
14:08:47 And it turns out, this was a place you always want to really be because it was near Washington DC, which is really course you want to be in anyway.
14:08:57 So she knew that I had an issue with my job.
14:09:18 Leaving me here at, or at Duke at the time. And she said, Look, come to Michigan and teach me teach for me for a year, one of the courses she taught was the introductory at that time cast course cast 100 introduction Afro American Studies is what we call
14:09:22 call it. He said, Do you come teach cast 100, and
14:09:28 some history course that's up to you what to do. So when I came.
14:09:34 That was in 1995. I came as a visitor, or a year to teach. Basically, make sure I taught cast 100, which was a big class, and I never really taught a class that large I think I had about 170 hundred 75 students.
14:09:53 That was a big class to me. And so, you know, I was pretty nervous about having to do it but I was glad to have a job, and I had, I had liked Michigan and when I came here on my job visit.
14:10:07 And so I was glad to be glad to be back here to move in moving to to Ann Arbor as I would. Anyway, I, I, I went to Brown University as an undergraduate.
14:10:23 I graduated from there in 1977.
14:10:26 And I finished graduate school at Duke.
14:10:33 In 1986, with a degree in history.
14:10:48 And I've been teaching for several years at Duke. Before I came to Michigan and again that was in 1995 that I first heard that I first arrived here.
14:10:51 Now, I can I can I can go on a little bit from there. What happened to Duke whatever that Michigan was I taught here I liked being a visitor and and teaching here for that year, but it was kind of a freeing experience, you know, So we got toward the end
14:11:09 of the year. The chair of the History Department called me and said look, we'd like to have you back. Julius under any circumstances, you would elect.
14:11:23 We'd like to have you as a permanent faculty member, but if you want to be a visitor. That's fine. If that's what you prefer. So I said, Look, I'm not the impersonal.
14:11:33 But can I just visit for another year and figure out what I'm going to do, let me just come back next year as a visitor.
14:11:41 Fine, everybody was was cool with that. But then a couple of weeks later and know came back there wasn't any money to pay visitors.
14:11:51 But they didn't have money to pay permanent new faculty members.
14:11:56 And so, so in a way, I got pushed into doing something that I wasn't really prepared to do which was go for making this a permanent job here in Michigan.
14:12:10 But after thinking about it for a while and talking to people about it.
14:12:16 I felt like it was okay, but by the time all that got figure it out. I had to figure out what I was going to do the following year, because I was not going to come back as I originally planned as a visitor.
14:12:29 So I accepted a one year job at New York University.
14:12:37 And it wasn't until I got to NYU.
14:12:41 The following year, that we made the final arrangements for me to come back to Michigan, as more or less a permanent faculty member.
14:12:50 But, But there was some complications with that as well.
14:12:55 So, I started out really be my main course that I taught here was cast 100, and I was really committed to teaching in cast, even though I also had an appointment in the history department.
14:13:14 But cast 100 was my again. At that time it was different than what it became over time we could talk about that at some point. But at that time we had two courses we had a course called cast 100.
14:13:31 We had a course called and that was introduced to Afro American Studies, and then we had a course called cast 105, I believe, which was introduction to African Studies.
14:13:38 And those two courses were separate and had separate constituencies. But of course that was part of what we ended up.
14:13:49 Adjusting and changing but again we can talk about that with under, under more specific questions that I've been at Michigan.
14:13:57 Since 1995, and
14:14:08 have been,
14:14:05 I've been really grateful to Michigan to all the, all the things that they have that they've done a lot to help me both in terms of my scholarly teaching career.
14:14:21 But I've also had some terrible health problems since I've been here.
14:14:26 And they've been great on that as well, helping me to to helping me to move through and take care of all these various, various issues that I've had to deal with.
14:14:40 So it's been a great thing being in Michigan for me has been a great thing in a couple of different respects, both in terms of scholarship and teaching, but also in terms of my health.
14:14:55 And I've had some great doctors and stuff here so it's been it's been great.
14:15:01 The short answer is night since 1995.
14:15:06 But, but I was only here for a year.
14:15:10 And then I was away for a year. And then came back in 1997, because it was just too late to arrange for the following year by the time we turn to that.
14:15:24 And so I ended up going to NYU for a year and coming back the following year.
14:15:31 Okay.
14:15:35 Thank you that that gives us this time, starting point so she's starting points.
14:15:43 As anyone want to jump in.
14:15:50 So, just to touch more on the cast and dashboards that became as 111, can you tell us how that class started, how it evolved and your roles in both conceiving and teaching the course.
14:16:03 Well, well I think the thing the thing that that I remember about it.
14:16:08 And you know my memory is that it's not perfect, but the thing that I remember about it was that there was really there were really two separate class, we we didn't, I didn't even really have any communication with the person that taught introduction
14:16:22 African Studies. And I think over time, by the time that Professor James Jackson, became the head of cast kind of moving ahead a few years from the time I got here.
14:16:36 One of the things that we talked about was trying to figure out whether this was a problem. The fact that we seem to have a whole separate constituency for the students to Afro American Studies, as a separate course from the introduction of African Studies.
14:16:54 And part of what we did like.
14:16:57 And there was there was a professor here at the time, who's now moved to the University of Virginia.
14:17:06 Who, who was really instrumental in this part of what we began thinking is, we couldn't really do this and so part of what came out of that was the effort to try to bring together.
14:17:23 those two audiences, the audience for Afro American studies with the audience for African Studies, there was considerable protest among both constituencies because the people who said I
14:17:42 didn't really want to talk about African Studies.
14:17:45 They want to talk about Afro American Studies at that. That was the course they took the same thing was true on the other side, people who were in African Studies, were different, they want to study Africa, they didn't want to study Afro Americans, but
14:17:59 we forgot to push those two things together and create a new class, a new class, which involves faculty that taught either Afro Afro black people in the world.
14:18:16 On this side of the Atlantic and black people in the world who were in Africa, and we were gonna, we were going to bring those two things, those two things together.
14:18:29 And part of doing that was really great because part of what it did was it forced faculty members to do what I had never done. I taught cas, 100. I taught that for several years, and I never ever actually knew or spoke to or talk to a heavy conversations
14:18:52 with anybody who was teaching the course.
14:18:56 Oh introduction to African Studies on the other side. But now what we're going to happen was, I was going to be in the same classroom with that person.
14:19:05 And we were going to have to sit down and figure out together, put the class was going to look like that was supposed to include the expertise that we had on either side of the Atlantic, you know, and to try to try to try to do that.
14:19:23 and that turned out to be a great thing.
14:19:25 As far as far as I was concerned, just in terms of
14:19:32 helping men class, develop, but also in helping us really develop within the unit, a kind of idea about the ways in which we wanted to present the black world outside of this context.
14:19:52 And part of that had to do with trying to think about not just talking about Afro Americans, not just talking about African, they're talking about us all together and to really try to get students, as well as ourselves to think more creatively about the
14:20:10 ways in which African Americans and Africans and African people and as it turns out, people of African descent and Europe and Asia and Australia, and the West Indies, you know, all around the world, we got to think we had to figure out ways to try to
14:20:30 include more and more of the black world in that and and part of that had to do with trying to handle the problem that we've been presented because our students wanted to wanted those two worlds to remain separate in ways that didn't seem quite right.
14:20:56 And because we had both faculty members and an administrator at that time, Professor James Jackson who really wanted us to move on. Just think about this broader.
14:21:09 We call the diasporic way of thinking.
14:21:13 Because we had people who wanted to do those to accomplish those two objectives.
14:21:20 We ended up moving on to talk about.
14:21:26 trying to teach a course called cast 111, and we experimented with different, different a whole lot of different combinations.
14:21:40 We, we will also try to have one person who specialized in their own scholarship on Africa, and one person who really specialized in their own scholarship on black people in some, some other place.
14:21:58 Maybe it's a maybe it was the United States, maybe it wasn't might have been the West Indies or Europe or whatever, but it was going to be different than the African setting.
14:22:13 And that's that really I think became an important.
14:22:18 An important teaching tool, but also what I remember about it was that it was it was an important thinking tool to help us to try to think more creatively about how we were going to talk about how we were going to do a course like this that students can
14:22:35 say man, they gotta go all around the world on this on this class, but really trying to figure out ways, specifically to to present them with different issues that we're going to make, make it make this way of thinking make sense.
14:22:54 That was a that was a that was an issue that we that, that we had to address, and part of answering the question that you asked about how did this course, develop, and I think it really, I think that part of it was developed along the lines of was that
14:23:15 I think that part of what was developed along the lines of was that it was really had to figure out, proper ways of teaching a class that people would all come in and find out that the part they had to the part that they didn't want to learn about was
14:23:33 also going to be really really an important part of their understanding of the world, and to make sure we convince people that in order to do that, you know, we couldn't just be having I'll be off in my African corner.
14:23:51 I was gonna be off in my Afro American corner. We had to really think about ways to come together, sit around at the same table and talk about what we're going to do and so part of what this new class, did that African is African American Studies, never
14:24:11 did this one I thought it was to most of it was to try to spend half of the semester, talking about the rest of the world, and relating that to the things we were talking about.
14:24:28 In that we were that we were used to talk about.
14:24:36 In, in terms of in terms of African American Studies. So, to me, we're jumping ahead a little bit here but to me, that was probably one of the most important developments that took place.
14:24:49 The whole time I was at Michigan which was me to move to move from teaching Afro American studies to teaching a day I diasporic course. And that was true, both for undergraduates.
14:25:09 But then I also began teaching classes, called origins of the black Atlantic, which again was a course that had to do with Africans on both sides of the Atlantic and how they got from one place to the other etc etc.
14:25:24 All those things.
14:25:27 I was doing that for graduate students, as well as for undergraduates, and it seemed proper to me because the work I had done to that point, that eventually became the book called The common when the work I had done to that point was really about that
14:25:51 question.
14:26:08 And about trying to handle in creative ways, but that question.
14:26:00 causes us to cost us to think about and to consider.
14:26:06 And so, all that kind of in the falling into place for me in ways that were really really very, very, very beneficial in almost every respect,
14:26:26 very insightful response.
14:26:28 I'll pass it to hear.
14:26:31 Thank you guys.
14:26:33 So that was that was very rich Professor Scott, I'm.
14:26:36 Great, well thank you and you you you you you bled into the kind of talking about the creation of your, your dissertation, which became the book.
14:26:49 The common wind and I stumbled upon the common when right before the book was published.
14:26:57 I was, I'm fortunate to be part of that group of graduate students who had access to the common land dissertation. And that kind of cohort of young emerging would be scholars who felt like we were in on something very important to our work but I want
14:27:19 to ask you about this very nice. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice way to say it. Think I want to ask you about the book. Um, okay, which, which, as you as you already aware as a dissertation it had already received the kind of acclaim that have been a book
14:27:37 would. Um, can you say a little bit about
14:27:42 how the how the book, kind of reflects your approach to history, and you started alluding to that in your question in your answering have asked this question you started to allude to how you were already exploring questions that come together in your
14:28:00 book. During your teaching of the classes, right and that's right that's, that, that, that's what that's what turned out to be the case as I recall it.
14:28:09 Yes. So can you reflect on how your approach to the study of history Black Studies, and even the mission of cast is reflected in your book the common when and how you came to even write the dissertation in the book.
14:28:24 The common with, um, yeah, yeah I can talk about that for sure. Good question.
14:28:34 Um, and, you know, any of these questions.
14:28:37 And you know, any of these questions. You all may not know me that will but one thing I can do is tall, so that's that's gonna be something that I do probably thought.
14:28:47 But, I used to go back and think about growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where I went to elementary school.
14:28:58 And I went to an all black elementary school.
14:29:02 And the other black neighborhood etc etc. And
14:29:11 I remember what the year that I was in seventh grade was 1968.
14:29:21 And 1968 was the year that there was a Olympics.
14:29:25 And it was on TV.
14:29:27 It was in Mexico City.
14:29:31 So, unlike what the Olympics did some years which was when it was overseas somewhere, it was too late for you to stay up that late to watch it in Mexico City, it was, it was right it was relatively reasonable.
14:29:45 It was relatively reasonable. So, I remember I had a neighbor next door, whose name was Keith. We were the same grade seventh grade.
14:29:54 And we to watch the Olympics together.
14:29:57 And one of the things that grew out grew out for us in that process was that we will be, we would watch and try to figure out who who should we root for in the in this race, or in this game or in this competition that was coming up.
14:30:19 Who should we move forward. And I think was, yeah, we gotta root for all the Africans and all the African Americans.
14:30:26 Those are the people that we ought to read for me. And we thought we were really making a great compromise. By including Africans.
14:30:39 Of course, we were going to support African Americans. But yeah, we're also advanced enough that we're going to support Africans as well. And of course, there are Africans represented to well in the Olympics, particularly in the in the in the in the track
14:30:58 and field events of long distance. Anyway, part of what we discovered though was that there were people who look like us who look like, what we would call black people.
14:31:16 But who weren't either from America, or from Africa.
14:31:24 Like, Colombia.
14:31:33 The moment to come up from Colombia, he'd be like, but what well. Well Is there like a black person shouldn't be should, should we move for that person to put, what's, what's the what's the connection between this person from Colombia, or Jamaica, or
14:31:44 the UK, the United Kingdom, or the other places where I occasionally. Whoa, whoa, whoa in public, but you'd be presented with was being introduced to a person who looked like a black person, but who wasn't African, and who wasn't an afro American, and
14:32:05 what it caused us to have a big discussion about question relationship between us and them is their relationship, are we really the same people is they are or not.
14:32:18 And, and, and part of that was, we just had to learn more about the background and, and, and history of other people besides ourselves. And that's what they became my,
14:32:38 my mission in history, which was to do that, because just go back all the time. Every address and really answer that question that was first raised for me.
14:32:52 In the 1968 Olympics.
14:32:55 The thing was at the time that Keith and his family live next door Keith's mother was divorced, and she had remarried, an African American individual, but she was from the Bahamas.
14:33:14 And she had brought with her to live in Keith in the house Keith lived in her aunt who was also from the Bahamas.
14:33:29 And one of the things that happened when I would go over there. I'd be speaking, what I thought was regular English to people like Keith and his mother and his stepfather, whose whose mother had married.
14:33:45 But then when his Artland enter the thing. She just spoke.
14:33:53 What I thought was and mistakenly pidgin English.
14:34:07 He spoke a whole other dialogue that I had, I did not understand at all. This the black person. This ain't no African is a black person from outside of Africa. I have no idea what they're talking about.
14:34:14 And again, that was just another reinforcement for me and try and trying to figure out, I've got to learn more about people, people of African descent who ended up in other parts of the world, but who were really different.
14:34:32 Then, than it was the case for Americans. And so part of that was Keith and his aunt.
14:34:41 Who, who, who all were who were always presented to me. The challenge of trying to work this out with my next door neighbor, as opposed to working it out on the broad thing but again, all that really went into to answer your questions here.
14:35:02 Oh, that is all of what kind of went into me thinking about what kind of history and I wanted to be.
14:35:08 And but I got to graduate school.
14:35:14 Um, it turns out that just because of the way my graduate education was structured.
14:35:22 This wasn't going to be this wasn't really true, a lot of places at that time. But certainly, where, when I went to do that time, Duke was really an undergraduate school that had a little grad program.
14:35:37 Now other schools were schools that had big grad programs, and the grad program was really what the faculty members were interested in, but that wasn't that wasn't true and it wasn't necessarily true at do.
14:35:52 So what that meant was, we were a little freer to explore thing. And so my thing was rather than just defining myself as an afro American historian. I'm going to try to find myself as somebody who figures out some answers to these questions that had been
14:36:12 presented to me as early as.
14:36:17 I remember as being the seventh grade, 1968, the year that you're obviously back to King was assassinated and a lot of things happened in 1968. You know, there were there were there were African American athletes who decided to boycott the Olympics, including
14:36:37 people like his, his name at that time was.
14:36:50 Was
14:36:50 he became Kareem Abdul Jabbar, that's how he was in college, and his name was, what's his name lu.
14:37:02 lu lu
14:37:02 and Lu our standard wasn't boycotted the Olympics, that there was a lot of stuff going on there. It was also the year that Tommy Smith and john Carlos run the 228 finished first and third in that in that sprint.
14:37:18 It finished first and third in that in that sprint. And they went to the, to the mental Stan, and each held up a Black Glove in the black power salute.
14:37:33 That also happened in that 1968 Olympics, big, big political year, as well as, as well as, as well as everything else but again,
14:37:40 presented it presents the problems of interpretation to myself and to the rest of us who were kind of we're kind of in that world, and part of my graduate training was going to be figuring out some response to that kind of that kind of question, and luckily
14:38:03 I have professors at the time, who were supportive of that mission.
14:38:09 And so, when I decided that what I was going to do was to write a dissertation that had to do with the impact of a
14:38:23 slave revolt revolution in Haiti,
14:38:30 and its impact on blacks in other places.
14:38:44 Trying to, again, address in certain ways that same question that I had been noodling around with, you know, since 1968 and trying to figure out a way to do this in a specific context.
14:38:58 And that's what became my dissertation, eventually, and as a, as part of that dissertation, I had the opportunity to do a lot of field research throughout the world.
14:39:16 So, I had done, done research in Jamaica. I've done research, and in Haiti. I've done research loaded in Barbados. So I've done some research in the Caribbean.
14:39:32 And I ended up. The following year, getting a fellowship that allows me to do research in Europe. And so I went to Spain. I stayed there for about six or seven months, learn how to read batch documents.
14:39:47 And then I went from there to London, where I did the same thing in the British archives that I've done in the
14:39:58 that I've done in the, in, in the Spanish archives and doing all that kind of stuff really helped me out a lot in trying to fashion and understand specific answers to specific questions that had to do with quantum relationship was between black people
14:40:21 living in one place, and black people living in another place. And that's part of what that as part of what became my, my, My mission and goal. And it's part of what I tried to accomplish in my dissertation.
14:40:37 And that's what really led me toward toward the common when really what led me and my dissertation in the in that, in that direction.
14:40:48 had to do with trying to address an answer.
14:40:53 Fashion answer to that question. Now, it was, it was difficult if I could just say one more thing about that. It was difficult kind of at that time, partly because, you know, when I went out on the job market, that's a that's a big thing for grad students
14:41:09 in the job market for the first time I went to places. And that was up for jobs that people didn't think I was qualified for, He's not really an African American his story.
14:41:18 He's something else.
14:41:27 He's not really a Caribbean historian. He's something else, he's not really a blank, blank. He's something else.
14:41:30 What, what, what was I. How was I going to define myself that was good that was a real tough question.
14:41:38 And my dissertation became my thing that I was going to have to use to try to address an answer that question.
14:41:54 And I don't know I don't know what else, what else I can say about it. But, well, we ended up being the case was my dissertation stayed on my desk for a long time.
14:42:13 Because I was, I was truly trying to figure out what the best way to answer these bigger questions about what I was what kind of historian that was how I was going to do that.
14:42:31 And the fortunate thing was places like both Duke and later Michigan enabled me to do like one thing and not other things. So I ended up being a piece of African American History.
14:42:46 And that's that was kind of okay.
14:42:49 Even though I wasn't really quite defined as the real African American history, and the way other people were, because I was interested in like the impact of something that happened at on people who lived in other places.
14:43:12 But that became at the that became the process. The process of my that led to that led to me writing a dissertation along along this line.
14:43:28 At the time, I wrote it.
14:43:34 I'll just share this one, this one little story with you.
14:43:39 You know, I went to actually timeless hole to that time was teaching at Michigan did a did a session at a conference where
14:43:55 I had been made as the respondent.
14:44:02 And so, after the after our session.
14:44:06 The person who chaired the session, pulled me aside and said hey, you have dissertation don't you when we do what do you do is take this away I'm not sitting on my desk.
14:44:17 I gotta figure out what to do with it.
14:44:19 And she said, You know what, I've got a series.
14:44:25 At, I hate to use this.
14:44:27 I hate to use this phrase but I've got a series at Indiana University Press.
14:44:33 Why don't you just send me in to get back to.
14:44:38 I was, I was living at that time in in North Carolina, and you get back to Durham.
14:44:44 Send me a copy of your dissertation at Indiana University Press, and we'll work out the process of trying to figure out if we should publish it so I said, Wow, I'm gonna get let me get the book published.
14:44:59 I went back and said it said my dissertation off to Indiana, press.
14:45:03 And I got a letter about two weeks later, the letter said, you know what your dissertation is kind of impressive and.
14:45:13 But it's not really what we're interested in.
14:45:16 This is not quite really what we're looking for.
14:45:19 And that, again, is caused me more concerned about the ways in which I was being, I was defining myself outside of the process of being a real African American historian.
14:45:36 And part of what my experience was the first time I tried to shut my book room, shut my dissertation that is a book that was the first time that I received that rejection.
14:45:53 And I was afraid, as an actor then to send it to other places.
14:46:02 And so I left it on my desk in taught classes.
14:46:07 The thing that happens though, to your again goes goes back to what you said earlier, the thing that sort of happened was that little by little.
14:46:19 People started reading my dissertation and responding to it.
14:46:24 And what happened to me was, every year at Christmas.
14:46:30 There'd be a check in my mailbox, which was which which were royalties from the number of dissertation copies i'd sold to the dissertation copy place.
14:46:48 And I, I told friends about this.
14:46:54 And they said, You know what, that's really unusual for dissertation, to take on that kind of thing. And so, so, so I I began to realize that my dissertation was taking on a whole role that whole a whole, whole unanticipated role.
14:47:14 And again, that's, that's kind of flipped what kind of became the legend of the common when that really was accidental me that I really didn't understand what was going to happen.
14:47:29 It just so happened that I luckily is happened to be doing my work at a time when a lot of people throughout the US and other places were trying to think about ways of doing some kind of oceanic history, where they connect it up and figure it out, the
14:47:56 connections between different places that board the same ocean. And that was part of what my dissertation was about.
14:48:04 And it again. It just so happened that a lot of people were interested in that, and that's why a dissertation is starting to start to be passed around.
14:48:14 And it wasn't it wasn't. But for a while, that I realized, hey, my dissertation is had gotten kind of famous.
14:48:23 And that's what ended up leading to eventually being approached by reverso books to
14:48:36 publish this dissertation into a book, because a lot of people were interested in that.
14:48:47 And again, by the time I got around or we got around to publishing it.
14:48:55 I was really kind of concerned because I didn't want to have to go back and re address things from a 30 years ago when I first wrote this as a dissertation.
14:49:07 We will now in the in the 2000s.
14:49:10 And I'd gotten my dissertation and got my degree from Duke in history in 1986. So I'd been out for a long time.
14:49:21 I've lost jobs, based on it.
14:49:26 And I told the editor that I spoke to adversity impressed. are you sure you want to publish this man. I wrote this a long time ago. it might it might be out of date now.
14:49:36 I'm not sure. He said, No, no, I can assure you it's not gonna be out of date. It's gonna be great.
14:49:42 So I said well okay if you say so.
14:49:44 And I went ahead reluctantly with it, partly because my partner convinced me that my parents would be really proud to have their son, haven't written a book.
14:50:00 And I said well I guess I guess that's true. Even though I don't want to have to go back and be addressed everybody, I did take too long to go through all that, again, But as it turned out, this been great.
14:50:15 I can't I just can't. I just can't say enough about all the great things that have happened to me as a result of having my book, finally finally published in 20 1832 years after it was a dissertation.
14:50:30 It was it was a it was a dissertation that I was a little scared of
14:50:37 the things, developed in way that really, oh gosh I'm sorry about my dog. They things developed in ways that were that really helped me out a lot.
14:50:49 Yeah. See I'm sorry I'm talking too much here I have a feeling.
14:50:54 No no no no.
14:50:57 In fact that you said you couldn't say enough about the reception but you say a little more, say a bit more things about the recession, tell us reflect for us please on the reception that your book has garnered what it means for you, what it means for
14:51:13 the work you know your approach to history, what it means for how gases, try to be a place for that type of work.
14:51:38 Um, well I've been very fortunate that that my book has been
14:51:34 an anticipated lead but unbelievably well received. I have gotten so many great reviews in play, you know, and again I got reviews like you know, the New York Review of Books and the times literary supplement, and the nation all these places where people
14:51:56 said wow, I would love to get a review in that journal that you just got this. You just got a big review. And again, because of what because of what other people can help me to do.
14:52:11 By that time, my book receive great as as received great attention.
14:52:20 I've won some big prizes. As a result of it.
14:52:24 And again, I hadn't hadn't anticipated any of this.
14:52:28 All this has been new to me today actually somebody wrote me yesterday and said hey I'm sending you a copy of a review of your book that appeared in a, in a appeared in Portuguese in a
14:52:47 journal in Brazil.
14:52:52 And I read a little Portuguese because I took that in, and taken that when I was a graduate student, and a dude.
14:53:06 And
14:53:06 it turns out that this author.
14:53:10 I'm a writer. He is it said in his review of the common when you know what we need to have this book published in Portuguese and for it to be available to people here in Brazil, we need a Brazilian edition of the common when.
14:53:29 And so, again, you know there are people now, they get about trying to figure out ways to get it, get it.
14:53:39 And so, it's become kind of an international as well as international sensation. So now there's about to be to Spanish editions of this new volume that are coming out.
14:53:53 There's about to be a Portuguese edition, somebody has all has already begun the process of thinking about maybe maybe there should be a French addition that.
14:54:04 And again, All this is gravy. All this is great.
14:54:20 And all this has to do with
14:54:14 the great reception that my book has received,
14:54:23 say, a lot of times if I had just done this.
14:54:27 15 years ago, my whole life would have been different, you know, be a famous historian, by now, as opposed to, as opposed to what I am. This is like quiet, which is kind of a,
14:54:41 a person who has a great reputation attached to him.
14:54:48 And you know I love being the person that I am, but I do often think about the ways in which things might have been different from me, and I just not waiting so long to have this book circulate under the condition of publication that it that it currently
14:55:08 garnered.
14:55:09 It does it what it has to do with my own work, though, is that, trying to think about what how I should I should I should address this, this question.
14:55:27 I, I do think that I mean this is this is the this is the easy answer to it. I do think that just in terms of the way things, developed here at Michigan.
14:55:42 It was really fortunate that I was here, because I was able to try to to begin teaching the black experience in ways that cross every t crossed the Atlantic.
14:55:56 And, you know, the smaller versions of the Atlantic like the Caribbean Sea.
14:56:08 You know, the ways in which that worked helped me, because I'd already kind of done that in my actual work.
14:56:11 And just so happens that we were trying to at least for a while, we got away from that now.
14:56:19 Much to my dismay, you got away from that now and in the past.
14:56:26 And in a way, it's been a little bit too complicated, because we need to have smaller classes now and we don't. And, you know, we need to have things more straightforward than they appeared to be at the time that we spent those years trying to figure
14:56:49 out ways to create a new class. Cast 111, and how to, how to teach it. I thought I did a pretty good job. In my role and teaching it that way, but I had great partners like Professor Kelly ask you.
14:57:08 I taught for a year, with with
14:57:15 Professor and Penny.
14:57:19 Again, an African of a different kind.
14:57:38 Africanist of a different kind. Then, then Kelly was the professor did professor, ask you, was at taught with some other people that taught me a lot about better ways to think about my broader
14:57:43 cross oceanic questions that again I i I'm oversimplifying this, but go back to, you know, the 1968 Olympics and trying to figure out ways to answer the questions that were raised, then,
14:58:04 that, that are still important questions for me.
14:58:07 And it just so happened. Luckily, that those kinds of things where are the kinds of things that other people were thinking about, and I have a little bit ahead of them in terms of my thinking about them.
14:58:22 And people learned a lot from me. And from reading my work. Part of that has to do with the fact that just because of the way we have structured our graduate education at Duke.
14:58:33 I was able to do things that other people really weren't able to do in their graduate programs and, and I was fortunate fortunate for from that, from that point of view.
14:58:48 So you
14:58:51 that course which can be all you're actually leaving yet, or you're still awake, or here or here which in fact is a couple of different branches I want to call for the last four years made it to travel on one or the other or hopefully both.
14:59:11 One is about that as an academic unit and intellectual community. So we like to say reflects more on assess how well you think das has done and try to get a place to to render festivals that cross oceanic framework perspective.
14:59:33 To understand the Diaspora in this multiplicity. So that's one, The other is.
14:59:40 You taught a range of courses, and with like you to reflect on some of your other courses, and particularly he taught a course on john Coltrane yeah it'll be worthwhile to have you tell us about where that came from.
14:59:53 intellectually and otherwise, and how you see that is fitting into the curriculum events in the past year, and both sessions also thinking about what das can and it should be in this next year.
15:00:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Professor Ward I, you know, I'm going to get into now into things that people might not agree with, but my thing, with my, I think my big disappointment, and that has been.
15:00:23 We haven't pursued this hard enough, he pursued it for a while, but now we're stepping back into hey I want to make sure I do my African thing on the African side.
15:00:35 I'm going to do my African American thing over the African American side. Yeah, good people doing great work in both of those fields, but we don't have people anymore, who are really doing what I think it was great work in crossing mixing up.
15:00:53 Swimming across the ocean in these different fields. And part of it is just that it's a difficult thing to do. People don't get trained to do that, you know, when when when you're coming up getting you're getting your dissertation African history.
15:01:11 They want you to learn African history, they don't want you to learn all kinds of other stuff. It will learn about Africa, you're doing your course and learning you're African American history.
15:01:21 And once you to learn about African Americans.
15:01:26 And that's what you ought to be doing, and some respects, answering questions in those ways, as opposed to try to answer them in the ways that I wanted people to try to answer them.
15:01:39 You know, so I understand how difficult that's been how difficult has been to maintain and I'm a little bit disappointed that we that we've been unable to continue to do this in ways that I felt like, at least for a while.
15:02:00 We're very very important interesting thing I'd be interested for you to talk to other people like Professor Johnson or professor many or
15:02:13 other people who had a chance to teach cast 111, and what their experience in teaching cast 111 was, in particular, what their experience was teaching their field or dealing with their field in context of having to do it with another with a prism of a
15:02:37 person from another field, who was trained differently than you were.
15:02:42 I would be interested to see how other people besides myself thought about their experience.
15:02:53 along these lines.
15:02:56 I understand the difficulties of this.
15:03:00 And I understand, in a way, why it's been difficult but, you know, people. I mean, departments like that.
15:03:11 After also maintain themselves by presenting themselves as experts in particular areas.
15:03:21 So das wants to step forward and say, we're great in black history. And by that they mean we're great in African American History, were great in the history of black people who live in the United States.
15:03:33 And you know, that's fine, That's that's perfectly okay and that's what you're expected to do by the deans.
15:03:44 I understand why it's a problem.
15:03:48 If you're not doing that.
15:03:50 And part of the problem with my.
15:03:57 Understand understanding about how this all worked out. Is it is that I don't think about things are things that same way.
15:04:04 And so, you know, I'm kind of, you know, I don't think about things in the in that in that same respect.
15:04:16 I respect my colleagues who teach African history, and who does end into other do and who do other things like teach about the Caribbean, or about, you know, South Carolina, or New England.
15:04:30 I respect those people who teach about, you know, blacks in Europe.
15:04:39 I have a lot of respect for all those areas.
15:04:43 But for me, always the question, kind of has been what ways is this relate to the history of people that look like me people of African descent who inhabit other places.
15:05:03 Question relationship that you can present to me to say that. Well, the history of blacks and South Carolina is kind of like the history of blacks and Jamaica, or it's kind of different than the history of people of African descent live in Sierra Leone.
15:05:17 In other words, trying to figure out ways of crossing that world and presenting presenting this and different kinds of question. So I feel like I'm not sure I want to say too much more about it, but I feel like that's been, that's been something that
15:05:31 we've sort of lost track of here in the last few years, part of its because of the BIOS, and part of its because our classes can't be big and quite as generous as they were at an earlier time, and we can talk more about that.
15:05:54 Maybe I shouldn't talk anymore but I just I'll just register the fact that that I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a little disappointed by the way, this all turned out.
15:06:06 And I, and I almost feel a little guilty about it because I, I feel like I feel like I'm the one who was trying to help push ass in this particular direction that made it difficult or compromised.
15:06:23 Yeah, we can talk more about that if you have other specific questions about it at some point.
15:06:31 Again, this was late in my teaching career at some point I was trying to figure out ways in the it really has to do with what what's what's that what's that word for thinking about your own.
15:06:55 Gosh, I was trying to cheer myself up.
15:06:58 And I say, you know what, I'll teach a course on, I began thinking about taking a course on john Coltrane. And I asked you about it, wrote up some stuff about it passed around gathered people to come talk about other people who bought courses about music,
15:07:19 got a chance to talk to them about stuff.
15:07:22 And so, I really decided that I was going to spend some time teaching this. I didn't hit you department, not really in das, but I did this is a history course, which was a course on john Coltrane and I tell students a little bit about the history of jazz
15:07:51 who Coltrane was and you know Coltrane is a very interesting important figure because of his, his, his immense immense
15:07:55 immense impact on a variety of people, but not just musicians, but poets and, you know, people don't short stories that had to do with them, other things.
15:08:11 So it was going to be a great thing for class because there was so many different forms of writing that we were going to had a chance to look at and consider over the course of time.
15:08:27 I'm not sure that it was, it was 100% success. But I do think people learn something.
15:08:35 When they took credit when they come to john Coltrane class.
15:08:44 And it was the case that it got to be pretty popular.
15:08:44 Every year, there were more people in it. So by the time.
15:08:49 The first time I taught it I had 20 students.
15:08:52 The last time I thought I had about 50 students.
15:08:59 And,
15:08:59 you know some, not all of them were 100% into this, but it got to be a kind of a popular class and I miss it.
15:09:10 I've been thinking about ways of maybe going to the library somewhere and teaching it reviving a cold painting class for people who are still interested in trying to learn more about the history of jazz and listening to jazz and sharing the understanding
15:09:29 of jazz with each other that's that that's.
15:09:33 I got a chance to do that in my, in my Coltrane class.
15:09:39 But yeah, I've had I've had an opportunity to teach a lot of different important things you know I taught a class on you know the importance of sport in
15:09:54 international blackness itself at some point, so that we saw that we talked about, you know, Jackie Robinson and, you know, people who were
15:10:10 African Americans from the West Indies, who transformed the sport of cricket and took over cricket, you know, and really talking about track and boxing in all the, all the other sports across the Atlantic, where people of African descent have really presented
15:10:28 themselves and done a really important job, transforming society, as well as transformed, as well as transforming eSports. I've had a chance to, to teach about,
15:10:47 you know, African American history before the end of the Civil War.
15:10:52 I had a chance to teach about the history of emancipation, and the end of slavery in different places comparing different areas of the world where they had slavery and ended slavery and different respects.
15:11:11 I've had a chance to do just been a great thing for me. Other words.
15:11:21 Das has done a favor for me by allowing me the opportunity to teach a lot of things that I feel like a very interesting. And that I hope I had a good chance to turn students on to
15:11:37 the culture and class was one of those, but certainly not the only thing that I taught that
15:11:47 took on that took on something like that.
15:11:53 Something, something like that.
15:11:58 In my life, something like something of that nature in my life.
15:12:05 I really, I really, I really enjoyed teaching here, Michigan's a great place to teach and great place to work. I've had great colleagues here.
15:12:15 And I really enjoyed the students that I've had a chance to meet here, and you know and maybe maybe in particular.
15:12:25 Students of African descent who've presented themselves to me.
15:12:35 Over the years, it's been great.
15:12:42 Wow.
15:12:46 Thank you.
15:12:47 Um, so, you, you, you, you, you kind of to kind of follow that thread.
15:12:55 You, you mentioned how you were teaching classes.
15:13:02 The one on coal train, the one on the weaves in
15:13:10 sports and the black athlete as well as
15:13:16 kind of social and cultural phenomena happening outside of the Academy is informing the kinds of classes that you were teaching while you were in class and us.
15:13:28 So I want to I want to ask you a question because I think that that's important. And because, given the history of the center of African American and African Studies class, it's born out of right socially, and in protests, you're right you're right you're
15:13:44 right yeah and and and that I think was part of the original framework that was opposed.
15:13:52 So, so, so part of what we're supposed to be doing was making sure that we created at had different things that had to do with contributions to and from the community, in addition to to and from our own our own academic work.
15:14:21 I'm not sure I mean I think there are people in death, for example your your your partner.
15:14:29 Professor Ward has been a great, a great
15:14:35 as a really done a great job for us, presenting a wonderful model of precisely those kinds of things with his courses trying to get students into Detroit and thinking about the issues that had to have to do with with with with that community.
15:14:54 He's done a great job doing that, and I'm, I'm not sure that I always was able to manage.
15:15:07 In particular, those kinds of things that took us to the community. In addition to,
15:15:14 to the, to the, to the world of of academic enterprise.
15:15:23 I do think that.
15:15:27 And I'm glad you pointed this out. I do think that that you know I had the opportunity to do a lot of things that
15:15:37 that did bring some understanding of larger community concerns into play in ways that students could
15:15:51 think about them and react to them.
15:15:58 I do often think about the ways in which, and I may not have always done enough to really satisfy that understanding of gas, gas, that's a part of the way in which we originally in which this unit was originally launched.
15:16:27 And in particular that community aspect, has been a really important part of it. And I do think we have been. We have faculty members in this people younger than I, who have done a great have done a great job trying to bring students off campus and into
15:16:50 the community. He got a chance to, not, not all of them are younger than me. So for example, you got it you had to get a good chance to to meet.
15:17:01 Professor Hi nice present if as you know taking students to overseas. And it's been really really a really important part of the things that different understanding of what the queer community means and what the significance of community involvement,
15:17:20 might
15:17:24 might encompass has kind of been things that have been things that she's done a good, great job.
15:17:32 I've never taken students, overseas.
15:17:37 And I'm not really, and I don't really feel like I'm in the position to be able to do that.
15:17:43 I do admire people
15:17:47 who get a chance to do that.
15:17:53 Professor Rennie
15:17:56 is the person who's also taking students overseas. and he spends time, the students in different places in West Africa he's been a goddess she's been in Nigeria, with students.
15:18:08 And it's been great for the students, they've learned a lot.
15:18:12 And, you know, I support those things, because I think they're an important part of what's supposed to be our understanding your gas that I always.
15:18:31 Unless you're always managed to do the things that
15:18:38 were we're of that.
15:18:47 level of significance and students, you know. Well I was
15:18:50 your academic work.
15:18:53 You brought the global kind of African Diaspora community to you.
15:19:21 And so it, the impact of your work has been in, in, in its reach, and in its effect on you know this kind of next generation of of aspiring historians and scholars who are still fighting the same fight and continue in the same thank
15:19:21 Thank you very much for saying that that's a that's a, that's very generous and important. I do think that that's precisely precisely what I've tried to accomplish in.
15:19:35 In my time here at Daz is trying to accomplish that tried to make that really a part of what my legacy has been here, and I do hope that to some degree, and in some ways, I was able to accomplish precisely the things that you talked about just.
15:19:54 Thank you.
15:19:57 Thank you,
15:20:00 Julie. So,
15:20:04 As we close out our interview with you
15:20:09 We'd like to ask if there's anything else that we have not addressed that comes to mind that you would like to share offer.
15:20:22 I'm.
15:20:28 Well,
15:20:35 I'm trying to go through my head here but my mental file.
15:20:46 I'm sure something will come up.
15:20:49 Come to me like you know next week that, but I feel like I feel like this was this was a great conversation that we that we managed to have where we really covered a lot of the ground that's really important to me in my, in my, in my time here.
15:21:07 I appreciate your opening that up for me in this in this, and I hope that it contributes to the thing that you're trying to figure out, it's great that you're trying to figure out a kind of an archival 50 year thing to really help students and faculty
15:21:29 and people, and others understand what we feel like the importance of this has been in terms of its contribution to, to, to, people.
15:21:43 I'm not sure I have anything to add to that. Now, I'm sure something will occur, they said it's all thought about that, you know, person now I'm an old guy that thinks it's going to take the time it takes me to realize things, appreciate what we talked
15:22:04 about today. Yeah, if something occurs to you they will be here as you as you know this is an ongoing process.
15:22:15 Clear. Here is a slogan that I'm the reason we're speaking with you for this project has been further amplify confirm in this conversation that you have been for some time a valued member of the community by all participants to continue contributor to
15:22:50 the community and a generative force in its history. So, I really appreciate that.
15:22:50 That's very nice.
15:22:43 I really appreciate that. You know I didn't always feel that way, but I really do I really am glad that that I'm very aware that you said that and, and I do hope that I did have that I had had a chance to make some important contributions to people's
15:23:04 lives here in the ass.
15:23:07 That is a question I speak for many say, well thank you so much. Thank you Professor Scott for your time and your generosity and your work.