The Public Humanities Exchange program (HEX and HEX-U) at the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities funds innovative public humanities projects that forge partnerships between community organizations and UW-Madison students.
The following blog post, written by past HEX Scholar Areyana Proctor (current graduate student in Media and Cultural Studies, Department of Communications Arts), highlights her recent experience as a HEX Listener Space Scholar with the Black Like Me Podcast.
The Black Like Me podcast, led by Dr. Alex Gee, engages communities in conversations about issues related to Blackness and race in both Madison, Wisconsin and the larger national stage. Proctor’s project involved the creation, curation, and moderation of a digital space for listeners. Together, Proctor and the podcast team discussed the content of the show and built a community oriented toward change. Additionally, Proctor developed a plan to train moderators for the project’s long-term sustainability and assist the implementation of in-person events aimed at engendering community.
The Power of Storytelling, Finding Representation, and Building Community with the Black Like Me Podcast
Graduate school was a new and unknown experience for me. I come from a very loving, encouraging, and experientially rich, yet tumultuous, resource-poor, and even impoverished background. I had not known that graduate school was something I could realistically pursue, until I joined the McNair Scholars program, which supports graduate education for first-generation, underrepresented students. Now, as a graduate student in Communication Arts, with an interest in media and cultural studies, I want to share my story, and the stories of those who look like me. Growing up, I did not have access to these stories and found myself searching for aspects of my lived experience in the characters of my favorite books.
I learned to read at a relatively young age and immediately immersed myself in books. I even began to experiment with writing stories of my own. I was particularly fond of “choose-your-own adventure” stories, as they allowed me to have a sense of control in the ever-shifting and chaotic world around me. My middle school years were a particularly hard time in my life. I found myself navigating the inherent struggles of becoming a teenager while grappling with a splintered home and housing insecurity. The library was my second home; a place where I could distract myself from an often unstable environment. I spent hours reading books and watching short amateur teenage dramas on YouTube, which especially intrigued me because of the author’s creativity and the sense of control they had over their stories, and because of their access to technology. During this period, I was very shy and anxious, and found refuge with the characters I met in my favorite books. I very quickly began to realize, however, that these characters didn’t look, act, or live like me: a Black, lower-class girl. This lack of representation took a toll on my self-esteem. Despite this, my parents always encouraged me to pursue higher education and forge my own career and future.
As a college student, I grew into myself and found inspiration in the study of race, representation, digital media, and activism. The intersection of these areas felt natural to me, especially in how they both connect to and alleviate racial issues. Pivotal to my transformation during undergrad was my involvement in leadership programs on campus that address social issues, such as racism. So, I knew when deciding to come to Madison for graduate school, I wanted to find ways of doing similar work in the community so I could continue to grow. During my first semester at UW-Madison, I came across a call for applications for a partnership with the Public Humanities Exchange Program (HEX) and a podcast titled Black Like Me with Dr. Alex Gee. Hosted by Dr. Gee and produced by Jeremy Holiday and Eli Steenlage, this Madison-based podcast explores issues connected to Blackness and racial justice. They have invited guests to speak on topics ranging from police reform to diversity initiatives at UW-Madison, among many others. Looking to expand opportunities for audience engagement, the podcast team sought to create a digital listener space oriented toward racial justice where listeners could gather, connect, and share stories of their own.
This opportunity stood out to me, but I was too nervous to apply until another student of color encouraged me. I am appreciative of her support, as the work with the podcast fulfilled my desire to hear and share representative stories about racial justice while fostering a community oriented toward social change. I knew that this opportunity could provide the type of representation and community that the young girl in me both needed and longed for. I wanted to be a part of this work to inspire others, tell ignored stories, and bridge community divides while pushing forward racial justice work. This especially felt important as a poor, Black girl, who constantly felt ignored and underserved growing up.
I immediately clicked with the podcast team. They had a sense of humor and camaraderie while still deeply caring about their work and its impact. They wanted to get to know me and my previous experiences working on a podcast for a research group titled the CU Boulder Affordable Housing Research Initiative, who explored the links between affordable housing and racism. They were also interested in short documentaries that I had a chance to work on for my undergraduate degree, which allowed me to explore struggles around race and experience, like my undergraduate capstone project that centered my own family. Additionally, my service on the board of Motus Theater, an organization that tells the stories of marginalized populations through publicly engaged theater, stood out to them. They constantly considered how I could mutually benefit from my work with them.
I dove into research and started to think through what it would look like to build and support this digital community. After a few experiments, trials and errors, and extended deadlines, the middle of the semester approached and I was ready to propose a plan for the digital listener space, which, considering the primary listener demographics, took the form of a Private Facebook Group. We were able to align the launch of the digital group with the start of the podcast’s 10th season, during which I helped coordinate a live podcast-recording event. At the event, Dr. Gee, his sister, Rev. Lilada Gee, and City Cast Madison Podcast host, Bianca Martin, discussed issues important to Black women in relation to the 2024 Presidential race. The event was held at Cafe Coda, and featured a young jazz band whose music fostered a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. I even had the chance to introduce myself and the listener space, which allowed me to reflect on my own journey and connection to this work. This was a very rewarding part of the process and helped get the Facebook Group off the ground.
As the 10th season comes to an end, I continue to reflect on my experience and what it has meant for my personal growth and journey, not only as a scholar, but also as an individual. Listening to the podcast episodes would have been enough for me; the stories were varied, nuanced, representing the diversity and complexity of Black experiences. Each episode, Dr. Gee included a “Black Ice Breaker,” in which he asked guests a series of questions that related to Black cultural practices, such as whether guests split the pole or how they prefer to eat their grits. Hearing these questions for the first time in a podcast resonated with me and reminded me of all the times that I have tried to broach similar topics with friends who come from different communities. Hearing about how our Black experiences are similar yet also different was an affirming experience. With some of the heavier topics that Dr. Gee can discuss on the podcast, including troublesome histories related to racial segregation, violence and ongoing discrimination, grounding the guests and listeners in the ice breakers serves to constantly re-establish and remind us of the community that we have, even in troubling times.
Getting the chance to work with the team, ask important questions, and witness both successes and setbacks with this work has been more than I could have asked for during my first three semesters of graduate school. With my own scholarly work, I am driven to explore digital activism and the ways in which we can create community spaces for marginalized peoples. My research considers what these spaces can and should look like. The HEX program allowed me to put some of those questions into practice.
Over time, momentum in the listener space began to slow. While people slowly trickled in, engagement among listeners was not what we had hoped it would be. However, rather than viewing this as a negative, I am encouraged to think about the growth and action that did occur. The live event stood out to me as a catalyst, as we used the energy from people being physically together to further cultivate that community online. This bridge between physical and digital community feels pertinent and is one that I hope to continue to explore along with the Black Like Me Podcast and its listener community. With time and patience, I know that the podcast community and listener space can continue to grow, build momentum, and inspire change among listeners. Having access to these stories and forms of representation will always be important, especially for people like me who desperately need and seek out this representation.