Featured Faculty: Dr. Paula Austin
Paula C. Austin is a U.S. historian and Black Studies scholar who researches, writes, and teaches about Black life and social movements. She is the author of Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life. She has also written about Black visual culture in the early 20th century for the Journal of African American History, the history of Black youth activism in Washington History Journal, and Black poor and working-class women’s interior and intellectual lives for Women, Gender, and Families of Color. Most recently, she reflected on her archival methodologies in The Black Scholar. Here she discusses her research and writing approaches for her book on young people in Washington D.C. and why young Black people’s epistemologies need to be taken seriously. Currently, she is at work on two research projects: organizational histories of Black self-care, rest, recreation and leisure; and a Washington D.C. history of anti-Black police violence and campaigns against it.