On her new album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé puts a new spin on Dolly Parton’s classic song, Jolene. Though the album has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success from the start, it has also attracted some pushback. It’s only natural that Beyoncé’s cover version would be compared to the 1973 original. Some people commenting online were vocal about not liking Beyoncé’s version, often citing its lack of vulnerability when compared to Parton’s version. But is vulnerability essential to the tale of Jolene? There are upwards of 80 covers of Jolene, but Beyoncé’s is a departure from the rest. Wi ..read more

Black Lives Matter protests often pitted demonstrators against police − but not in every city. Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images Black Lives Matter protests in cities with Black women police chiefs experienced significantly lower levels of violence – from both police and protesters – than cities with police chiefs of other racial backgrounds and gender, according to our newly published paper. After George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement surged. Advocating for social justice, the movement galvanized over 11,000 protest events acr ..read more

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever rewrote Hollywood’s script for superhero movies. English professor Diana Adesola Mafe was recently involved in an academic roundtable that offers a critical conversation about it and another film set in an African kingdom, The Woman King. She argues that Wakanda Forever is a breakthrough film. We asked her why. Why are these two films such talking points? As big budget productions with Black female heroes, The Woman King and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever invite discussion and debate about Hollywood representations of Africa and the kinds of roles that women and ..read more

While white women may speak of breaking through the “glass ceiling,” for many Black women, it’s more like a “concrete ceiling.” Black women experience unique and formidable barriers in the workforce that are not only difficult to break, but also obscure their view of career advancement opportunities. A comprehensive study in 2020 exposed the harsh reality of Black representation on Canadian corporate boards: Out of 1,639 board positions across eight major Canadian cities, only 0.8 per cent were occupied by Black directors. According to the report, in Toronto, where the Black community makes up ..read more

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her office in Atlanta, Ga. David Walter Banks/Getty Images On the day he was indicted on financial fraud charges in a New York City courtroom, former U.S. President Donald Trump launched an attack against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. One of the handful of Black female prosecutors in the country, Willis has led a criminal investigation into Trump’s alleged campaign interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. “In the wings, they’ve got a local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her ..read more

House Democrats join an abortion-rights protest on July 19, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images It’s been a year since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the predictions by several experts that the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would lead individual states to ban abortions have come true. Also true has been the impact of those bans and restrictions on the reproductive health disparities between Black and white women. As a scholar who studies reproductive policy, politics and social justice mov ..read more

Many women who are incarcerated were just trying to make ends meet for their families. Here an image from a rally to demand the release of people held in jails, outside the Riverside Correctional Facility in Philadelphia, May 2020. Joe Piette/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA Mother’s Day is just a few days away. It can be a complicated day. For some, it could mean a bouquet of flowers or a breakfast in bed. For others, it can mean mourning the loss of a loved one or dealing with a haunted past. And still — for others — like the 66 per cent of incarcerated women in prison who are mothers, it can mean someth ..read more

The stress of experiencing high levels of community violence harms entire families. skynesher/E+ via Getty Images Black mothers are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the mental and physical harms of stress from living with gun violence in America. In the U.S., Black people are likelier than white people to reside in impoverished, racially segregated communities with high levels of gun violence. Research has suggested that living in violent and unsafe environments can result in continuous traumatic stress, a constant form of PTSD. Researchers have also linked experiences of violenc ..read more

LSU's Angel Reese reacts in front of Iowa's Caitlin Clark during the second half of the NCAA Women's Final Four championship basketball game in Dallas on April 2. LSU won 102-85 to win the championship. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez) Louisiana State University’s women’s basketball team has been crowned 2023 NCAA champions. The championship game was the most watched in women’s NCAA basketball history with 9.9 million viewers tuning in. Toward the end of the game, Angel Reese from LSU celebrated by waving her hand in front of her face and pointing to her ring finger. Her gestures were largely directe ..read more

Our guest on this episode has insights into long COVID both as a researcher and a patient. Jessica Felicio/Unsplash Join us for this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient as we speak with Margot Gage Witvliet who has insights into long COVID both as a patient and an epidemiologist. If you don’t pay close attention to news about COVID, you might think the pandemic is nearly over. But for the millions of people worldwide suffering from long COVID, that couldn’t be further from the truth. And the number of those experiencing long-term symptoms keeps growing: At least one in five of us infected wit ..read more