Episode 2 with darius bost
In this episode
Caroline Fowler is joined by former Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow Darius Bost to unpack the enduring impact of Hortense Spillers’s 1987 landmark essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe.” The conversation situates the essay within its historical context, including its critique of the Moynihan Report and its intervention in Black feminist and Black Studies discourse. They also reflect on why the essay continues to be widely cited—yet sometimes insufficiently understood—within art history and beyond. The episode considers how Spillers’s ideas open up possibilities for reimagining visual culture, embodiment, and Black queer futures today.
Darius Bost is an Associate Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the author of Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and co-author of A Black Queer History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2026).