Volić’s research mathematical methods for evaluating the effectiveness of different mechanisms of democracy bring a much-needed quantitative perspective for understanding the rise of nationalism. He is also the director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy, and teaches Mathematics and Politics (MATH/PEAC 123). 

On a personal level, “A lot of what I do in this space of math and democracy is informed by my experience of an immigrant from Bosnia who came to the U.S. because of the war that broke out there in the early 1990s.” 

Volić attributes electoral mechanisms for this, because these systems, from the constitution down to how local elections are carried out, support ethno-religious entities and encourage voters to choose their representatives according to these divisive identifications, not according to what is best for them.

He listed mechanisms of democracy such as the way we vote, apportion legislative seats, as processes that influence certain outcomes, including nationalism and related ideologies. It can elevate fringe candidates with the support of a minority of the voters. 

“What we see in the U.S. (and Western Europe) is nationalism as democratic pluralism taken to its extreme, leading to intolerance and exclusionary politics. Our democratic systems have become instruments for this nationalism.” 

Some examples include how plurality voting encourages polarization, decreases participation by third parties and minority candidates, and supports negative rhetoric and campaigning. Primaries are decided by a handful of voters who often represent the base of an extremist candidate. Single-winner districts have through plurality voting and gerrymandering become for the most part uncompetitive and all that is required to get reelected is to appeal to the base.

According to Volić, there are mathematical ways to show that certain electoral methods are better than others in the sense that they increase representation and elevate more centrist candidates – ranked choice voting, multi-member districts, and open primaries among them. This community conversation series was a direct way his researched solutions can be applied to tackling real world problems like nationalism. 

“We need better electoral engineering, namely a better design of mechanisms of democracy that would produce outcomes that are favorable to more people.”

Image credit: wellesley.edu

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn

“As a Latin music scholar, a lot of people are shocked that I like to do Zumba because the music is corny and seems very inauthentic,”Rivera-Rideau said.

The idea for this book stemmed from a conversation she had with another Latinx studies scholar, Professor Juan Flores, where she conveyed that she wished someone had written a book about Zumba. Flores was a former professor of Latinx studies at New York University, and one of Rivera-Rideau’s mentors.

“The topic of Zumba fitness came up [in a discussion], and Juan teased me about my love [for the] classes. I mentioned to him how I was waiting for someone to write about all the contradictions in Zumba fitness … [He responded], ‘Why don’t you write it?’” writes Rivera-Rideau in the acknowledgements in her book. 

When Rivera-Rideau initially began writing, she struggled to immerse herself within the community because she lived in rural Appalachia in Virginia at the time. However, once she started working at Wellesley College, it was easier to write about the fitness program because Boston and New England are a part of “a vibrant Zumba world.” For many Zumba enthusiasts it provides a space to do high-intensity dancing without feeling like they are working out, and for the Queer and trans community, the space can serve as a place of affirmation.  

Rivera-Rideau explained during the event that despite Zumba promoting itself as a space for love and cultural appreciation, it subverts this outward messaging behind a licensing system that prevents many people from legally being able to enjoy this fitness program. With the required fees and conventions, many instructors cannot rely on Zumba instructing as their main source of income. For many instructors, legal or not, they do lessons for the “sense of freedom” and culture. Rivera-Rideau said she quickly noticed the irony in this motivation. 

“I think one of the things that makes Zumba tricky is that it is supposed to be a positive space. It is supposed to be a place that promotes cultural appreciation. All the people I was talking to were motivated a lot more by the idea that they were spreading cultural knowledge to the world, than by making money,” Rivera-Rideau said. 

In 2005, the Zumba Fitness, LLC organized a fundraiser to support recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria. While this event strengthened the evidence of the company’s dedication to the Zumba community and their commitment to their stated mission of “spreading love,” some controversial decisions made by the Zumba Fitness, LLC prompted skepticism about whether their message and values truly embody the spirit of love. Specifically, Zumba markets itself as a place for freedom and letting oneself go, but this message can inadvertently reinforce racist misconceptions about Latinx culture. 

“Many of my [interviewees] would say ‘Anything goes in Zumba and you can do anything for an hour. It is so amazing you can act in all kinds of ways, you could never act elsewhere’ … [but] what they really mean by that is you can be sexy and … that is, you can do body rolls and shake your butt … [So, you can do this] because it is Latin and the stereotype of Latinos is that we are party-loving animals, we love to dance and have no morals,”  Rivera-Rideau said. 

Rivera-Rideau hopes her book will encourage people to have healthy, critical discussions about Zumba while respecting the existing communities that find connection and benefit from the activity. To support her goal, she chose to forgo the short readings typical for a book release and to instead educate attendees about the complex world of Zumba. Zumba is more than just dancing; it represents an intricate web consisting of a company facing ethical concerns from the public and a strong, loving community. 

Image credit: Duke University Press

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn and Diya Khanna

“[Global anglophone is a] field that has really inherited the field of postcolonial studies. [It is] invested in challenging more contemporary conceptualizations of universalism, like human rights, cosmopolitanism, globalization, finance, multiculturalism, and all of the failed promises of those projects,” she said.  

Rich also discussed how she conceives of her own work in the larger context of global anglophone and in relation to the many themes under the umbrella of postcolonialism.

“I do want to stretch what counts under the rubric of global anglophone beyond the reach of the British empire – beyond the model of colonialism; the future of global anglophone is just a lot broader,” she explained. “[It functions] in conversation with Asian American and Asian diasporic studies, with transnational American studies, and also things like critical refugee studies or environmental studies.” 

Rich’s interests extend beyond global anglophone – the intersection between law and literature is another central area of exploration for Rich. She majored in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College and said that law is one of the interests she’s carried with her since undergrad that continues to influence her research and teaching today. 

“A lot of the work in the field of law, culture and humanities is very much in tandem with the field of global anglophone literatures and postcolonial studies as well.”

In keeping with this interest, Rich will teach an English seminar at Wellesley entitled “Imagining Justice in Law and Literature: Rights, Reparations, Reconciliation.” The class, which is cross-listed with Peace and Justice Studies, considers jurisprudence after WWII, from human rights, truth and reparations to postwar criminal trials. 

“A mentor once said to me: ‘Law shouldn’t be left to the lawyers,’ and I think … it is a discourse that should be taught in conjunction with social sciences and humanities at the undergraduate level, not [waiting] until law school to have these conversations about law as a shaping force of human experience,” she reflected. 

Rich also plans to teach more writing courses on contemporary literature in the Fall and Spring on global fictions and representing war. Rich describes “Global Fictions After Empire” as an introduction to contemporary global anglophone literature, including Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” and Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things,” in addition to works by Asian Americanists like Ruth Ozeki and Monique Truong. 

“[The course is] interested in what stories we tell to make sense of the world, how these narratives are shaped by history’s imperialism and independence,” Rich said. “[It’s] interested in what kind of critiques of empire the fictions that we’re going to encounter sustain, and also the flip side of critique: what kind of role do they play in establishing a sense of community, or shared language, or sense of place in [an] empire’s wake?”

Rich’s spring class examines representations of war in the 20th and 21st centuries, from World War I and II to the Cold War and the Global War on Terror. The class spans mediums and genres, covering novels, short stories, Supreme Court cases, poetry, graphic novels, films, journalism and theory. 

“The ways in which these armed conflicts are represented play a huge role not only in our collective memory of them but also in the way that we conduct ourselves in their wake,” Rich reflected. “I think it’s a pressing course to teach now to give a conceptual vocabulary to thinking about our own current conflicts that we are living in today.”

Rich’s first book centered on the inception of the modern welfare state in Britain after World War II. This investigation of war and postwar was the seed for her current research for her second project, “Children of Conflict: Cultural Forms of Transnational Adoption,” which examines transnational adoption and kinship during the postwar period. 

“[The project] draws on my core interest in thinking about the relationships of wars and their postwars and the kind of reparative imagination that gets attached to and activated during wartime … how transnational and transracial adoption has been figured as a form of repair for geopolitical violence as well as it has acted as a technology of empire,” Rich said. 

Rich, a transnational Korean adoptee herself, reflected on her own identity and the public-facing element of her research.

“Part of this project, because it is the second book and it’s a little bit more personal in some way, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do this work in a more public-facing way,” she said.

As Rich looks to the future of humanities and her future at Wellesley, she is considering how to make this public-facing work a reality. She discussed the possibility of examining adoption archives and the use of archives in humanistic research and reflected on the potential to create a space to read one’s own adoption papers in community: 

“Public-facing work beyond writing has to do with creating community spaces where we can talk about the experience of adoption, in a way that is in conversation with its representation,” she said. “To have a space to say, how do we look at these? How do we read the absences and the silences or the information that might not be correct? What does that look like, to engage with that – because I think you have to do it in community.” 

Rich highlighted that Wellesley’s Adoptee Connections & Awareness (ACA) org speaks to the changing landscape of adoptee activism and community building. 

“Colleges are becoming a really vibrant and important space of adoptee activism … my heart warmed to see that such a group existed because a group never existed for me,” she said.
Rich was also optimistic that Wellesley’s English department had seen such consistently high enrollment numbers compared to other colleges and universities that have seen notable declines in English enrollment numbers. She spoke to the present and future of the English department at Wellesley and its faculty: 

“It’s part and parcel of the liberal arts ethos and the humanities, as spaces and forms of inquiry that really go hand in hand. Even though in some way this robust and multifaceted group of colleagues I’m going to join represents what we know and love about English, which is people invested in and engaging closely with literary form, I think they also represent where the discipline is going – into thinking about the synergies of literary criticism and creative writing. It’s a feedback loop. We have to think about both of those, both interpretation and making, together.”

Finally, as Rich prepares to join Wellesley this fall, she is excited about coming back to a liberal arts environment.

“One of the reasons I’m so happy and delighted and honored to be joining Wellesley is because it allows me to return to a small liberal arts college. I learned how to think – and read, really – in the spaces afforded by a small liberal arts college, and that type of community, and engagement and the intimacy of that space and the kind of concentration of that space is really important.”

Having earned his PhD in American Literature from Cornell, Cudjoe taught at many universities including Cornell, Harvard, Brandeis, Fordham and Ohio before coming to Wellesley in 1986. In addition to being very involved in literary spheres, writing and producing multiple books and documentaries, Cudjoe serves as the director of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and president of the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (Trinidad and Tobago). 

To commemorate all he has done for the Wellesley community, the Africana Studies Department, in collaboration with the Office of the Provost and others, is hosting a four-part lecture series, with the latest installment being Nov. 14’s “Fear of Black Consciousness,” a lecture by philosopher and author, Professor Lewis R. Gordon. Andrea Palmar ’24, a former student of Cudjoe’s and now a TA for the department, observed how the most recent lecture’s subject matter closely tied into Cudjoe’s work.

 “The lecture was amazing. It really connects to Professor Cudjoe’s curriculum; it was a lot of literature and using critical race thinking to better understand different perspectives and the black experience,” Palmar explained.

The series will culminate in April in a symposium of Cudjoe’s work, celebrating his academic career and impact as a Caribbean African American scholar.

When Cudjoe first arrived at Wellesley, the Africana Studies department was nowhere near where it is today. 

“We essentially had to try to build the department. Regarding black presence, I don’t say it was taken for granted, but people didn’t care much about it. We had to make the black presence felt in order to make the department more relevant,” Cudjoe said. 

Carter Jackson elaborated on Cudjoe’s contributions, saying “He’s been a huge advocate of our department. He is emphatic about making sure Africana studies is a department that has its own thing, its own courses, its own framework, its own outlook on the world, and not having our courses or our faculty outsourced and piecemeal to other departments.”

With this priority, the proponents of the department faced the challenge of achieving recognition, and to this end took actions such as mandating certain courses for all students and collaborating with other departments through cross listings. 

“Through having joint lectures and other cross-department opportunities, we worked towards making the school responsive to our presence and confirm our legitimacy. In this context, I think the English department was very supportive of what we were doing,” Cudjoe added. While the department has made big strides under Cudjoe’s leadership, he notes that “there’s still a whole lot of work to be done.”

With his international background, Cudjoe has brought a “breadth of intellectualism and activism to the College community of Wellesley and beyond, particularly concerning the presence, contributions, and representation of Black life and Black thought,” as Professor Liseli Fitzpatrick puts it. Fitzpatrick first coined the term ‘human library,’ as a nickname for Cudjoe, an apt descriptor that has quickly caught on. 

Throughout his time here, Cudjoe has revolutionized the discourse surrounding race and blackness, always emphasizing the importance of black history in education. 

“Since blackness, or the presence of black people in society is so central, you really cannot say that you are educated if you do not know anything about the black experience,” Cudjoe explained. 

“He teaches amazing courses on literature. The one I took with him was Intro to the Black Experience, which was a lot of black literature and it’s just so amazing the way he’s genuinely familiar with texts,” Palmar agreed. 

Retired political science professor Craig Murphy, who has worked with Cudjoe on cross-listed courses on African politics and other projects elaborated on Cudjoe’s unique perspective as a globally recognized scholar. 

“Professor Cudjoe is a very broad-based scholar. He works both in the humanities side of things and on the historical social sciences. And he’s connected to all of the communities that work in Africana studies around the world,” Murphy said.

With this perspective, Cudjoe spearheaded initiatives in structuring the department, including hiring decisions. 

“I’m a historian by trade. Professor Cudjoe was really instrumental in me getting hired. It was through him and a lot of student activism that came together and basically demanded a historian be put in the Africana Studies department. So they created this position as a result of his and students’ efforts to have someone who could contribute one of the building blocks of the Africana Studies Department, which is history,” Carter Jackson explained.

In addition to his dedicated advocacy for the AS department, Cudjoe is deeply involved with his students. For Palmar, Cudjoe served as a career advisor as much as a teacher. 

“He helped me get a job for the African Studies department and I became the TA for that class. You can tell that he’s a very passionate person and it was just a great working experience … He has given me a lot of great opportunities throughout my undergraduate experience,” Palmar, who now serves as student assistant for the Africana Studies department, said. “He takes such interest in students on a personal level, which really helped me find a place in this community.” 

Cudjoe’s Trinidadian heritage provided a facet of representation for Caribbean students, including Sylvette Dupe-Vete-Congolo ’24. 

“He was my first Caribbean professor, so to have that connection with him was very interesting. I never really saw anybody of my origins in such a role,” Dupe-Vete-Congolo said. 

Beyond Africana Studies, Cudjoe urges students in every context to think critically and sympathetically with a holistic understanding of issues at hand. 

“To understand what’s going on in the news, you need context and history. And then you can make judgments. This is a great challenge for many students,” he said. “To become objective to the degree you could become objective, and develop the courage to express independent judgements about issues, is something to cultivate.”

While his time at Wellesley is coming to an end, Cudjoe still has many projects on the horizon. In addition to being in the final stages of writing a new book called Two Caribbean Preachers about the lives of two formerly enslaved men, Cudjoe is also in talks for the production of a documentary based on his historical biography, The Slavemaster of Trinidad: William Hardin Burnley and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.

Fitzpatrick has also introduced a new project in collaboration with Cudjoe aiming to record Cudjoe’s life experiences for posterity, which Fitzpatrick explains will include topics such as “his upbringing in Trinidad and Tobago, influences, activism, travels, professorship and retirement.”

Over his nearly four decades at Wellesley, Cudjoe’s initiatives to transform the Africana Studies department have had lasting impacts, and the longevity of his professorship greatly contributes to his unique perspectives.  

“Professor Cudjoe is the holder of our department’s memory and history. I am forever indebted to his efforts to make Wellesley a more welcoming place for black faculty. The work that they did in the 1980s has directly benefited me and other junior faculty of color,” Professor Chipo Dendere commented. 

Dupe-Vete-Congolo agreed, citing inspiration from Cudjoe’s persistent efforts. “No matter the barriers that were placed in front of him, he always found a way to either jump over them, bulldoze through them, crawl underneath them, and make whatever he wanted to happen, happen. And it was always for his students,” she said. 

Carter Jackson expressed similar sentiments, saying, “He has all of the institutional memory. To be able to go back that far, and know how much Wellesley has changed and evolved, is a real gift and [his retirement is] a real loss. I hope that he will always stay connected to the department and see himself as a part of a continued community that will continue to thrive because of what he’s poured into it.”

Professor Ahmed began his career as an economist. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts in economics at Northwestern University, he worked at the White House Council of Economic Advisors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. His transition to academia began during his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago where he had to teach as a part of his degree. After experiencing the teaching side of academia, Professor Ahmed explained, “I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I like the research side of being a professor, but the most rewarding part about it, I think, is the teaching aspect, being able to interact with students, convey knowledge to them.” Before coming to Wellesley, Professor Ahmed taught at Princeton University for nine years. The move to Wellesley is an especially welcome change for him because it is a transition to a more teaching-focused and student-centered environment.

Professor Ahmed’s main area of research is political economy with a focus on international economics and international political issues. Other topics that his research branches into include development, political violence, international economic law, and the political economy of migration. Recently, in 2023, he published “Conquests and Rents: A Political Economy of Dictatorship and Violence in Muslim Societies,” which is a book that examines reasons for why much of the Muslim and Islamic world tend to be underdeveloped. As he explains, “a central piece of that argument is thinking about historical processes in the way that Islam spread across these regions and so writing that book I have more knowledge on thinking about the role of history in political and economic development.” Looking towards the future, Professor Ahmed hopes to teach a course on something related.

“I have long hoped or wished or been curious about what it would be like to teach at a liberal arts institution, an institution where the point of the college is teaching. And it has not disappointed. I’m really a believer. The students here have been so amazing and so brilliant and confident and very honest. [There is] a lot of evidence that like y’all are really nurtured,” said Winner.

Her passion for teaching has been present for much of her life, and her first experience came right after undergrad, where she found her time in the classroom to have a positive impact on her own explorations within the subject. 

“I worked at a summer school in New Hampshire, and it was really fun. And then I went to grad school … [at] Stanford and got to teach college students for the first time, which was thrilling and a very steep learning curve. I found it really grounding and really helpful for my own thinking, really animating, and it feels really good to be helpful in that way. I love it a lot,” said Winner. 

Although her parents are more “STEM-oriented,” Winner explains that by the time she was in high school she already “identified as an English lit kid.” She continued to follow her interest in the subject, and found additional inspiration in the devotion and enthusiasm of her teachers.

“When I think back on it, I just kept getting lucky in terms of being exposed to really invested, passionate, brilliant teachers [that] I just kept finding. My professors were so interesting and so helpful. I got interested early in literature, and then I just stayed interested … I feel really lucky to still be doing it,” said Winner.

She describes her favorite part of being a professor as “hearing what students really think.” Winner explains that an essential element of being “good” at English is having the courage to engage authentically and vulnerably with the work, and accepting that your own understanding of the piece is a core part of what and how everyone in the classroom is learning. 

“I like getting honest reactions, especially to experimental or esoteric or weird texts. I feel like I’ve done my job when the students in my class really believe that they’re entitled to their own reactions to those texts. And so much of what often gets cast as being smart or good at English is about confidence and just having the willingness and the wherewithal to say what you actually think and what the text is actually bringing out within you and taking your reaction seriously as data. When that gets going and the conversation gets really honest and I get to learn what people your age actually think about this stuff that I spend a lot of time thinking about, it’s just amazing,” said Winner.  

Besides teaching, Winner says that another part of what she has enjoyed so much about her time at Wellesley so far has been her colleagues in the English department. Describing herself as an “English department partisan,” Winner has so loved getting to spend time in other Professor’s classes that she urges every reader of “The Wellesley News” to sign up for a class.  

“I’ve been going around to different people’s classes to observe people teaching because I’m fairly early in my career and I want to learn … The people are delightful. And there’s such a wide range of approaches. I watched his [Professor Tavi Gonzalez’s] class and I went in ready to take notes about teaching or observe his teaching and instead I just fully became a student and started taking notes about the content. I was so amazed at how much I learned, and how much energy there was and how collaborative the conversation was. And then I also observed Bill Cain’s class, Professor Cain, and again just amazing. I’m really excited to keep going around and learning about the faculty and … the department.”

Beyond the department, Winner looks forward to getting to know the school further, exploring all the connections and opportunities that are a part of the Wellesley experience. 

“I’m excited to learn more about Wellesley as a community because it does seem like a very healthy and community minded place … I want to learn more about everything the college has to offer,” said Winner.

Nhamo took the chance to re-explore campus before the start of classes, and found it was like a stroll through memory lane.

“All of my closest friends, my closest core group friends, are people I met during my time at Wellesley … The place is just littered with wonderful memories. Flashbacks of like oh, I remember like this conversation I had with a good friend on the way to the Ville or when someone’s bike got stolen … It sounds so cliche. It’s funny, you just also have these moments of “I’ve been running trying to catch the commuter rail since 2007,” said Nhamo.  

As an alum, Nhamo says she appreciated having a sense of Wellesley going in, but she’s also enjoyed seeing how the school has developed.

“It definitely helps to have a sense of the culture of the place … I had really wonderful professors like Dave and Daniela who are now colleagues. You’re not coming into a totally foreign context. But one of the most exciting things is how so much has evolved. In the department, I think that’s really exciting in terms of the technology, the equipment that’s available, the studio space that’s available. The instructional technology support staff who are amazing and who are available … It’s really exciting to see how different programs have gotten more and more beefed up … CAMS did not look the way it does when I was coming in. And the Media Arts and Sciences program has developed a whole lot as well. It’s great to be part of a place that has so much progress going on,” said Nhamo.

Describing her path to becoming a professor, Nhamo explains that she comes “from a family of educators” and although she doesn’t feel she was directly inspired to follow in their footsteps, she thinks it might have “infused subconsciously.”

Nhamo is passionate about both the practice and teaching of art, and having spent some years on the former, she is excited to spend time in the classroom. 

“Teaching and practicing were the two main things motivating me to get an MFA. And for the past eight years since I left Pittsburgh [and] finished grad school work at Carnegie Mellon University, I’ve focused more on the practice side of things and this was a wonderful opportunity to get back into the teaching,” said Nhamo.

Although she had been interested in art throughout middle and high school, Nhamo credits her time as a student at Wellesley as a big reason she decided to pursue it as a career.  

“I took ‘Women in Film,’ my first year writing seminar, and that got me interested in film production, which at that time was still very much in the studio art department. And then I did a volunteer opportunity in New Orleans… and they had mural painting as one of the activities there and for me it was this great moment of seeing ‘oh, here’s something I love doing and that I can do that has made such a positive impact on this group of people, I think this is something worth pursuing,’”said Nhamo.

As a Professor, Nhamo describes her favorite moments as the ones where “you just see in a student’s face when the dots connect.” She is also particularly excited about teaching her seminar course, which she got to design.

“It was amazing to be able to weave in elements of my practice with the scientific and theoretical knowledge I wish I had investigated while I was still in school. It’s been wonderful to dream something up and actually get to teach it,” said Nhamo.

Moya’s exposure to music started practically before he was born, and he describes being carried along to his three older brothers’ music classes, where he was promptly equipped with a violin as soon as he could carry it, and he says “the rest is history.” As a child, in his hometown of Caracas, Venezuela, he was part of a music program that he credits with inspiring him to become a teacher. 

“This wonderful program that brought music education, brought access to music lessons and music ensembles and performances to people of all backgrounds and socioeconomic status. And so part of the tenets of [the program] is this idea of teaching peer education. So as you move through the ranks, as you get better at music then it’s incumbent upon you to pass on the knowledge and that experience to the generations that come after you. The teaching portion of music making was always to me seen as one part of the whole package of being a musician. That’s what it meant to be not just a musician, but a musical citizen is the responsibility that we have to pass on that knowledge and experience,” said Moya. 

As a professor, Moya draws from his own experiences of being a student, hoping both to emulate and improve upon how he was taught.

 “In some ways what you’re trying to do as a teacher is to both imitate the great teachers that you had and then correct or reframe the less than great teachers that you had. And so you’re hoping to do better or to at least continue that tradition that was given to you, the world of knowledge to which you were introduced at some point,” said Moya. 

When choosing Wellesley College, Moya noted the reputation of the school, the genuine interest students bring to the classroom, as well as benefits of being near Boston, both personally and professionally.

“It’s a fantastic school with terrific students. Students that really want to learn, that are curious, that want to engage, that are perfectly happy to sit in a room and go down the various rabbit holes of things … It’s in the Boston area, which has some of the best music making in the country, we can have access to all of these amazing world class musicians and acts coming through and participate in the music making that happens right here. There’s also some family connection. My wife grew up in Massachusetts, was born in Boston. Her mother and her grandmother actually went to Wellesley … Wellesley has been a legendary name on her side of the family. And her parents are two hours away in the western end of the state and that matters. We have two little children, we really have to be able to have family closer by … Having lots of friends and connections in the New York/Boston area, it’s nice to have opportunities for collaboration and further growth that are a little bit closer,” said Moya. 

As a professor, Moya explains that his favorite aspect of the job are the “moments of discovery,” which he recalls being his favorite on the student side of the experience too. 

“Finding those moments with the students where things click or where there is an idea introduced that’s totally novel to them and they can frame their experience in a different way … Or to wrap your head around what you thought was a complex concept, if explained correctly and properly maybe it’s not so complex. Or maybe it is complex, but it’s beautiful in that complexity. Can we talk about that beauty? … Somebody asked me at the end of class today “Why is music so hard?” It’s made by humans … we are full of contradictions. These things have been evolving and changing and not changing for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and it bears that history and that messiness and the contradictions within it and the redundancies in those systems. They can be frustrating, but they can also bear the fingerprints of our humanity and discovering those, pointing those out and bringing a shred of clarity into some of the discussions is very fascinating for me,” said Moya.

Ok’s winning collection is titled “Ward Toward” and will be published by Yale University Press sometime in April 2024. She describes the text as being about wards and the ways they are enacted as well as their impact.

“It focuses on different wards that are imposed on individuals, including particular rooms and institutions, as well as on words and on the languages of those places and people and the impacts that they have. It moves through experiences I’ve had as well as concerns that I share with others about how these wards can potentially be constraining or unjust,” said Ok. 

Ok highlighted the excitement and enthusiasm they felt when submitting the manuscript and how they “felt it was ready,” but also expressed concern over the centrality of these competitions to success in the field of poetry. 

“Unfortunately, the poetry world is set up with this model, relying on contests, so a lot of poets who are emerging submit manuscripts, whether they are chapbook manuscripts or full length manuscripts, as mine was, to these contests where many, many people submit, and often, there’s only one winner. It’s unfortunate that it has this set-up because there are so many amazing manuscripts that people want to read and that should be published,” said Ok.

When considering her career as a poet, Ok describes their choice to become one as not necessarily deliberate but rather more of an organic transition arising from their long-held passion for reading. 

“It doesn’t feel like it was too conscious a decision. I was certainly always interested in reading, and read from a very young age, and I think that for a lot of writers, an interest in reading leads to a willingness as well as the capacity to add to that which can be read,” said Ok.  

As a teacher, Ok explains that many poets are unable to support themselves solely on their works, but that many poets find great meaning and joy in their work as teachers, herself included.

“There is a loving history of teachers of poetry being writers of poetry and wanting to facilitate spaces for students to commune, particularly around poetry. So, I feel grateful to be a part of that context … I used to be a high school physics teacher in Los Angeles … And teaching creative writing is a bit different and at the same time there are a lot of lessons that have carried over for me,” said Ok. “I feel excited and fulfilled and creatively generous through teaching. I read more widely as I teach because I want to imagine more around what my students are interested in, and reading between genres and in periods I don’t typically read in has helped me be interested in a larger body of work through empathizing with my students.” 

Ok is currently working on new poetry, as well as a book of translated poems, but said they spend most of their time during the semester on student work. This summer, Ok will be participating in an artist residency in Oregon and said they “hope that having that space might lead to new experiments of the mind or of language.” Ok noted that she will be back in Cambridge next spring doing readings during the publication of their book. Looking forward, Ok expressed a desire to begin the practice of sharing their work more with people in their personal life. 

“I have a few very close friends who are also writers and those relationships are very supportive for me and remind me to celebrate and mourn the things that we have in common … I haven’t had a lot of readers for my work in my social life. I hope that in the future, I will have friends that I share work with more directly,” said Ok. “I feel grateful for the support that I do have and the friends who can understand the types of decisions or confusions that I may face in terms of directly exchanging work. It’s not a presence in my life and I hope it will be one day.”

Recently featured in Netflix’s new series, “African Queens: Njinga,” Carter Jackson was called into the project as an expert on Queen Njinga, the first woman king of the 16th century Ngolo region of Africa who fought against the slave trade. 

“I think the first time I got goosebumps was when I watched the trailer because I did not expect to be in the trailer,” said Carter Jackson. “I’m in it twice, which is wild to me.” 

Executive produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith and starring Adesuwa Oni as Njinga, the project is significant in many ways. For one, it brings the work of scholars to the forefront — most notably, the work of Boston University Professor of African American studies and history Linda Heywood, who wrote the book on Queen Njinga. Carter Jackson uses Heywood’s book in her own class, but as she notes, she can only reach 15 to 20 students at a time, while Netflix’s reach is far more expansive. Using Netflix as a platform to convey Queen Njinga’s story also increases accessibility. 

With this series, Queen Njinga’s legacy leaps outside “the bounds of the ivory towers of academia,” allowing it the opportunity to reach anyone with access to the streaming service. This is a step into transforming years of research from scholars into a more digestible form, conveyed through poignant visuals — adding a new format to learn from in addition to academic texts and podcasts. But being a docudrama, the series still adheres to scholarly roots, which is where Carter Jackson comes in. 

“What I love about it is that it’s the best of both worlds,” said Carter Jackson. “You get the drama that you would get in ‘Game of Thrones,’ but you also get the history. Historians and experts are backing up what you’re saying. … .We are sort of your Google or your Wikipedia. We give you the historical context, we tell you what’s happening and why it matters. And so you can enjoy it while you’re watching it, but you can also learn something new.” 

The docuseries format melds the informative and entertaining in a way that simultaneously values accuracy and storytelling. 

“I think you had to have something like this because very few people know who Queen Njinga was,” Carter Jackson explained. “This was the first moment where she’s being introduced to the public in a major feature. So I think for everyone who was involved, it was really important that we be honest and factual about what happened and that we tried to stay as close to the historical texts as possible.” 

Because the series is based on historical events, Carter Jackson noted that not everything can be fully accurate because historians do not know every detail. They can, however, make educated guesses based on available scholarly work and historical evidence to create the most authentic visual representation possible. The inclusion of these details adds texture and nuance to the series. 

Beyond her role as a historian, Carter Jackson has a story of how she became involved in production. Called up by producers about a year ago because of her experience teaching about Queen Njinga, she was soon invited to fly to London to film. 

“We filmed in this really cool studio. It was all day long. And they peppered me with questions about Queen Njinga,” she recounted. 

Under a barrage of questions for both the pre-interview — during which she helped filmmakers get a better idea of what the film should look like, from costuming to time period accuracy and more — and the interview itself. Though she often teaches about Queen Njinga, Carter Jackson still took time to prepare for this process, rereading Heywood’s book, refreshing her knowledge and coming up with her own talking points. Then, radio silence from producers until the series was about to be released. 

“It was a long time in the making. I don’t know if people realize that when these documentaries are made, it’s often a year or sometimes years in advance. You do all of this work, and then forget about it,” Carter Jackson said. “It may take another year or two before it actually comes out and you get to see all that you put into it.”

In the meantime, Professor Carter Jackson continued teaching. As Wellesley’s Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor of Africana studies, Carter Jackson teaches “anything Black history and culture” Currently, she is teaching “Enslaved Women in the Atlantic World’ and ‘African American History: From Reconstruction to the Present.’

“When I teach my Black women history classes or Women in slavery in the Atlantic world, I start with Queen Njinga,” said Carter Jackson. “My students know that when I talk about the slave trade, I don’t start with kidnappings. I start with kingdoms. I try to let my students know what Africa looks like before Europeans get there.” 

She says that she will be using the series, now that it’s been released, to aid her teaching. Not only will it serve her as a teaching tool, but the content of the series is a source of passion for Carter Jackson.

“Studying and talking about Queen Njinga is something I’m really passionate about and I’m just so empowered by her role in history, like what she did, not just for her people but how she set an example really for all rulers and leadership,” Carter Jackson said. 

One of the most significant outcomes of the project is presenting an African woman as a paradigm for successful, long-lasting leadership. 

Carter Jackson explains that Queen Njinga ruled for a long time, living to approximately 80 years old and even riding into battle on horseback well into her sixties. Even more impressive to Carter Jackson, however, is the tradition she started; her sister took the throne after her and of the 100 years following Queen Njinga’s death, 80 of them were ruled by women.

“I think we have such a strong precedent for understanding male leadership. But we don’t know what it looks like to have a woman in power and to keep having women in power,” Carter Jackson said. “[Queen Njinga] worked as hard as she possibly could to stop the slave trade, to stop the Portuguese from encroaching on her kingdom and from stealing her people and other people’s people. We don’t have enough examples of that kind of courage.” 

Even with the odds against her, Queen Njinga continued to oppose the Portuguese, demonstrating both her strength as a strategist and her compassion for her people: a striking duality. 

“It’s just a really powerful story to me and the fact that it’s true! It happened! I always say we don’t have to make these things up. It’s nice to have mythical kingdoms and characters, but history really is exciting. And there are people, real people, that that we can draw upon that do amazing things and you should know their names,” Carter Jackson said.

Carter Jackson also notes some of the unique aspects of Queen Njinga’s life.

“She was pretty fierce, “ said Carter Jackson. “Some people say she killed her brother for the throne and had harems of both men and women. She sort of had a queer sexuality about her. There’s a lot of her about her life that is just ahead of its time. She was a real pioneer and a real heroine.”

Explaining that she feels as though she was filling in the gap for Heywood, who was unable to be part of the project, Carter Jackson lent a passion and informed perspective to the series. As an author, scholar and podcaster herself, Carter Jackson has been able to spread historical information across a variety of mediums. Now, in the new frontier of film, she is making her mark yet again.