Episode 34: Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’
Exploring Queen B’s Lemonade album with academics and Beyhive members Kinitra Brooks and Kameelah Martin
When Beyoncé gives you Lemonade, make a reader (and a podcast episode). We close out season 2 of This Week in Dystopia with a discussion of Beyonce’s audio-visual experience and album Lemonade.
Host Chris Robichaud is joined by The Lemonade Reader co-authors Kinitra Brooks, Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University, and Kameelah Martin, Professor of African American Studies and English at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. The discussion covers why Lemonade is so popular and ends with a conversation about pop culture’s role in education.
This Week’s Guests
Kinitra Brooks
🐦 @k8dee16
Kinitra D. Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University, USA. Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture. She currently has two books in print: Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror (2017), a critical treatment of black women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror; and Sycorax’s Daughters (2017), an edited volume of short horror fiction written by black women. Her current research focuses on portrayals of the conjure woman in popular culture. Dr. Brooks is serving as the Advancing Equity Through Research Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University for the 2018–2019 academic year.
Kameelah Martin
Kameelah L. Martin is Professor of African American Studies and English at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, USA, where she is also Director of the African American Studies Program. Dr. Martin’s research explores the lore cycle of the conjure woman as an archetype in literature and visual texts. She is author of two monographs: Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo (2013) and Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (2016). She is the Assistant Editor of the College Language Association Journal and has published in Studies in the Literary Imagination; Black Women, Gender, and Families; and the African American National Biography. She has edited special issues of Genealogy and South Atlantic Review, and co-edited a section of The Routledge Anthology of African American Rhetoric (2018).
On this episode
This is the end of season 2 of This Week in Dystopia. We’ll be back in the fall with season 3! What do you want us to talk about next? Send feedback and ideas to sarah_grucza@hks.harvard.edu.
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