Lavelle Porter is a writer and professor of English at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology. He joins us to discuss his new book The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual, which explores representations of black intellectual life from the Reconstruction Era to today. Along the way we touch on the lesser-known fictional works of W.E.B. DuBois, the rise of Black Studies on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, the complicated, tragic legacy of Bill Cosby, and the evolving conversation about higher education in 21st century hip hop.
