{"id":48896,"date":"2016-08-29T18:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48896"},"modified":"2016-08-29T18:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:00:51","slug":"black-intellectual-history-and-stem-a-conversation-with-dr-chanda-prescod-weinstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48896","title":{"rendered":"Black Intellectual History and STEM: A Conversation with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Intellectual History and STEM: A Conversation with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

AAIHS: African American Intellectual History Society<\/a>
\n2016-08-29<\/p>\n

Greg Childs<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor
\nDepartments of History and African and Afro-American Studies
\nBrandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

This month, I interviewed Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein<\/a> on the intersections of black intellectual history and STEM<\/a>. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical astrophysicist specializing in early universe cosmology. She is the 63rd black woman in the United States to earn a PhD in Physics<\/a>. She is currently a Research Associate in Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle and the editor-in-chief of <\/em>The Offing<\/a>, an online literary magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Greg Childs (GC): What were some of the formative texts or life moments that helped you decide to pursue STEM research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (CPW):<\/strong> When I was ten, my mom took me to see the Errol Morris<\/a> documentary, \u201cA Brief History of Time<\/a>,\u201d which was about the great theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking<\/a> and his ideas about the universe. I hadn\u2019t wanted to see the film because I thought documentaries were stupid, but half way through, Hawking was talking about black hole<\/a> singularities<\/a> and how we don\u2019t really understand the physics at that point in spacetime<\/a>. My mind was blown by two things: there were things Einstein<\/a> hadn\u2019t figured out, and you could get paid to worry about things Einstein hadn\u2019t figured out! I was sold. I came out of the theater begging my mom to buy Hawking\u2019s book of the same title<\/a>, but she was worried it would be too hard and discouraged me. Her brother, my Uncle Peter, bought it for me as an 11th birthday gift a few months later. After that, I looked Stephen Hawking up and emailed him to ask how to become a theoretical physicist. One of his grad students responded. Here I am 23 years later doing theoretical physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

GC: You engage with a broad range of important black thinkers and creators in your writings, from Sojourner Truth<\/a> to C.L.R. James<\/a> to Prince<\/a>. How has your engagement with African-American history and philosophy impacted the way you theorize about the universe or lecture on astrophysics<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CPW<\/strong>: Long before I even knew what physics was, the history of the African diaspora<\/a> had been knitted into me through my family, my name, and conscious education. This necessarily means that I have never considered doing physics or being a physicist separately from the unfolding story of Blackness…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Intellectual History and STEM: A Conversation with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein AAIHS: African American Intellectual History Society 2016-08-29 Greg Childs, Assistant Professor Departments of History and African and Afro-American Studies Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts This month, I interviewed Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on the intersections of black intellectual history and STEM. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13743,8,20,25],"tags":[20798,20797,21524,23567],"class_list":["post-48896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-aaihs","tag-african-american-intellectual-history-society","tag-chanda-prescod-weinstein","tag-greg-childs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48897,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48896\/revisions\/48897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}