In our ninth episode, and the final episode of season one of the Just Three podcast, host Catherine LaSota is in conversation with writer, scholar, and educator Noni Carter. Noni was a graduate coordinator for the Transnational Black Feminisms working group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference in 2019-20.

Noni discusses her life in academic work, questioning the formative language, and the definitions of "human" and "re-humanizing," that is deeply entrenched in various practices. She asks, how can we relate to the world, the environment, and more in different ways? She also talks about the narratives that are told around young black women of color, and her own goals as a writer of YA and speculative fiction. Noni also brings up the importance of intersectionality and celebrating each other's differences, and the importance of slowing down and asking ourselves, as individuals, which of our deeply held beliefs are socially constructed.

Noni Carter is a historical and speculative fiction author. She has published work in RSA Journal, Kweli Journal (forthcoming), and is the author of the YA historical fiction novel, Good Fortune (Simon & Schuster, 2010), winner of the Parent’s Choice Gold award. She is a 2016 graduate of Voices of Our Nation and the recipient of the 2019 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her work-in-progress novel Womb Talk. Noni is currently finishing a PhD in French and Francophone studies with a focus on memory, gender, and slavery in the literary traditions of the Black diaspora, specifically the French Caribbean. She works as an editorial assistant with Small Axe Journal and as rapporteur for Columbia’s Cultural Memory Seminar. She served as a 2018-2019 graduate fellow for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and as the 2019-20 graduate assistant for CSSD working group Transnational Black Feminisms.

More about Noni Carter: https://www.nonicarter.com/
More about Columbia University's Cultural Memory Seminar: https://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/cultural-memory/
More about Small Axe Journal: http://smallaxe.net/

Learn more about the Transnational Black Feminisms working group here:
https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/projects-/transnational-black-feminisms

Website of the Center for the Study of Social Difference: https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/

Music in our podcasts is by Blue Dot Sessions, and episodes are mixed by Craig Eley.

Catherine LaSota, host of the JUST THREE podcast, is Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.