IK: 0:13

Welcome to the cohort sisters podcast, where we give voice to the stories, struggles and successes of black women and non binary folks with doctoral degrees. I'm your host, dr Yajama Cola, today. I'm so thrilled to have Dr Jalicia Jolly, an assistant professor of American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College, joining us today as a PhD in American Studies from the University of Michigan and a 2022 Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University. Dr Jolly's research focuses on black women's health, reproductive justice, organizing, intersectionality and transnational social movements. Her forthcoming book manuscript, called Ill Erotics Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in the Time of HIV Aids, offers a compelling ethnography of young black Jamaican women living with HIV and their confrontations with reproductive violence and inequality in neocolonial Jamaica. Dr Jolly's work goes way beyond academia, as she actively engages in community interventions and co-leads Birth Equity and Justice Massachusetts, a reproductive justice coalition. She's also the co-host of the Health Equity podcast alongside myself, and it is my complete honor to have Dr Jolly on the cohort sisters podcast with us today.

JJ: 1:32

It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for that warm and jolly welcome.

IK: 1:37

Well, thank you again. Let's just start off. I feel like you know, I know you well, but the people don't know about you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, when do you live now and what are some of the things that you like to do when you're not busy working on your book, working on your research, organizing or teaching? What are some of the things that you like to do outside?

JJ: 1:58

of all of that.

JJ: 1:59

I love this question. Thank you for starting with it. So my name is Jalicia Jolly. I am from Kingston, jamaica. I grew up in Brooklyn, new York, and I'm currently based in Western Massachusetts at Amherst, where I'm working at Amherst College. So when I am not working, one of the things that I love to do is traveling. I love traveling with my family, with friends. I absolutely love exploring the world through the eyes of my almost two and a half year old. I love spoken word, poetry, love writing it, love, you know, witnessing it and seeing folks. I love perform it and I love to eat. You know I might not be the best cook, but I surely am a wonderful eater.

IK: 2:43

I, you know, did not know about the spoken word. I feel like I feel like we've known each other for a little bit and you had just posted last week or the week before about doing spoken word in was it Paris? I was like what in the world, how did you get into spoken word?

JJ: 3:04

Yes, yes, so I. So as a teenager in Brooklyn, I participated in HIV organization. It was arts and activism and it was my first time sort of seeing arts and activism together was arts activist organization that brought together dancers, poets, you know, theater folks, storytellers, rappers and other artists. They brought us together to educate and share information to the, to black and brown youth throughout the city around HIV and sexual reproductive health. And so during this time we would have community events, sort of outreach activities, and we would have community events and outreach activities that brought us together to share information about, you know, sexual health, ways to educate yourself, protect yourself, but also ways to kind of communicate with various generations of people about safe sex, well-being and just reproductive and sexual health on a broader level. And what we would do is come together and have open mics. We would have open mics at cafes and other, you know, public venues and spaces throughout Brooklyn. And that's really where I learned about my love for the pen, about writing and really spoken word. Poetry set my soul on fire.

IK: 4:24

I love that. I love that. I am curious is there anything else that you know happened in your childhood, or any other memories that you can recall that kind of shaped the academic, the organizer, the activists, the artists that you are today, aside from that program that you did when you were in high school?

JJ: 4:43

Wow, Dr Kohla, that was an excellent question. You should do like should be an oral historian.

IK: 4:50

You're good at this. I may or may not be one.

JJ: 4:54

You may, that is true. Excuse me for not assuming that you already are. Yeah, so that's an expansive question.

JJ: 5:01

I think what I will say is the first thing that I would say is I think I inherited a legacy of health organizing and equity work, and I inherited from my mom, who was a union organizer with 11.99 and a home health care worker in New York City. I also inherited it from my grandmother, who was also a union organizer and advocate when she first came to this country in the 80s, up until her death really. In addition to this legacy of health activism, I think I also inherited a legacy of health inequality, and it was important to see those both, those two intention and in tandem. So my grandmother experienced forced sterilization and had a poor access to prenatal care and which led to the death of my mother's infant brother. And so just kind of having that context for how I come into my work, my research, my and my love for spoken word and documenting experiences and sharing them with the world, that is an important backdrop that I think shapes my work.

IK: 6:06

So I would love to know if there was anything else about either your childhood or your educational experience that led you to end up studying American studies. And the reason I'm asking that is because I feel like American studies is one of those fields that it's an interdisciplinary field. It's kind of like nebulous and it's understanding. Is it government, is it geography, is it US history? Like what is it? So I would love to know how you ended up like focusing your work or like centering your work in that discipline.

JJ: 6:37

Right, right. So that's an excellent question and I think I shared exactly what you described in terms of trying to figure out what exactly is this understanding of American studies. When I was a college student, applying to graduate school, applied to black studies programs, women's gender and sexuality studies programs, and then American studies was like my third option because I was still trying to figure out and grapple with what exactly it means. I have a much firmer understanding now that I'm teaching it, in that, now that I went to a graduate program American Studies at the University of Michigan, which is called American Culture and it's conceived as a transnational diasporic program, which is the best configuration for a transnational scholar like myself, the educational experiences that really shaped my understanding of American studies and my desire to sort of study and teach in it was really having the experience that I did in graduate school as well as, I would say, undergrad, when I took a look at my transcript and I realized that a lot of the courses that I took in black studies and women's gender sexuality studies actually cross-listed with American studies. But it was really in graduate school that gave me a firmer understanding and I'm so glad to be kind of wedged in between, I'm joined in American Studies and black studies, like being able to kind of understand my positionality as a black woman professor in both departments is also significant to my understanding of kind of how I come to both fields differently. But I would say my American Studies really for me is a transnational understanding of the people and cultures and experiences of not only the Americas but also broader, even broader, in the transnational and diasporic sense For me.

JJ: 8:18

I think what really motivated me to study American Studies was to see the ways that leading scholars in American Studies were really complicating this fraught and contradictory space of the United States and these conceptions of freedom, citizenship and democracy and really turning those on its head by interrogating the experiences of black and brown folk, of BIPOC communities, really bringing imperialism and colonialism into the context and to the fore, to really unpack.

JJ: 8:48

Well, what exactly does it mean to study Americas and really explore the idea that studying American Studies is studying the United States but really thinking about how we can prioritize hemispheric and global perspectives of the Americas and beyond. And so that was really important to me, both as a transnational scholars I mentioned, and also as an immigrant, as a black immigrant, as a black girl immigrant growing up at this cross-section between US imperialism and British colonialism. It was really important to really see myself in a context and a field that that prioritized that and, of course, bringing that together with my black Studies lens really allowed me to really think about how political movements and liberation struggles varied and were similar, intersected, across different cultural contexts, time periods and geographic regions. So that really was the the impetus behind why I wanted to study American Studies and especially why I'm so delighted to be joined also in black Studies.

IK: 9:50

So I think we have a good understanding of your educational interests and background. We know about your long lineage, proud lineage, of being an organizer and being really interested and passionate about reproductive justice. We don't know anything yet about how you ended up in a doctoral degree or pursuing a doctoral program, so can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards entering into graduate school?

JJ: 10:13

Thank you for this question. It's a good one I had. So the Melon Maze undergraduate fellowship program was a crucial aspect of my journey to a doctoral degree. So the Melon Maze undergraduate fellowship program is a huge equity-based initiative that prioritizes providing structures of support, resources and mentorship to underrepresented students who want to enter the academia and be professors, to underrepresented students who want to enter the professory, whichever way you want to use for that.

JJ: 10:47

And I participated in that program in my rising junior year and it, you know it changed my life. It was. It really expanded my understanding of research, of knowledge production, and it really demystified what exactly academia is. It demystified what research and knowledge production and intellectual work could do on a broader sense. Right, and so that was a crucial program. And then they also provide support for you when you're applying to graduate school.

JJ: 11:17

So I had not just sort of, you know, resources and support, but also there's a crucial network of alumni and of kind of a few more senior college students who you know, did anything from share their applications, who just talked to me about the process and really helped me understand exactly how to approach this, like with being informed and being intentional about where I wanted to select where I wanted to live, how I wanted to build an intellectual community, not only during undergrad but also beyond it.

JJ: 11:49

So that program was instrumental. There was also another program called the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, irt, which also provided crucial support for people applying to graduate school. And they and IRT provided support to allow me to apply and complete my applications, matched me with a mentor who looked, provided feedback on my research and personal statement. So both Mellon and MMUF and IRT were instrumental in kind of just facilitating the process for me at a time where you know it's senior year, you're overwhelmed, you're doing so much, you're also still trying to like be a whole human time with your friends before you all disseminate across the world, the globe. And so that was kind of how I entered and and that's and that's how I entered and got my footing in doctoral programs.

IK: 12:42

Nice. So I now want to talk about the impact of your work after you completed your doctoral degree. You have been published in a range of academic journals as well as popular media outlets like the Washington Post, usa Today and Miss Magazine. How do you approach writing for different audiences? I think graduate students so often are thinking solely about, kind of like, getting a first author publication. So how do you think about doing the academic writing, the journal article writing, while also writing in the popular media, and what role do you see public writing playing and advancing your research and advocacy goals?

JJ: 13:20

Thank you for that. I would say I love writing, and one of my primary commitments whether I'm doing, you know, research, academic writing, for manuscripts, journal articles are for sort of you know, public outlets it's to really produce work that is exciting to read, that's enjoyable, that is irrelevant, right, that's culturally informed and also that's accessible. I would say I want anyone, from, you know, the president, to my mother, to my grandmother, to cousins back home, to be able to read it, and, and I want work that every day people can read and actually engage and find useful in their lives and advocacy. And so one of the things that is important for me, I would say, is identifying kind of like a coherent message that I want to get across, right, and why it matters to me and, importantly, why it matters to different audiences, whether that be policymakers, researchers and academicians. Beyond that, though, you know black communities in the United States and then the Caribbean, why it matters to you know organizers, advocates, educators and etc.

JJ: 14:21

So at the early stage of my writing journey, I had my husband, my friends and my sisters read my work and give me general feedback, because I know they were going to tell me if something was unclear, if there was too much jargon.

JJ: 14:33

And during this time I also started writing for the University of Michigan graduate school blog called the Rackham blog, and that really taught me how to like communicate concisely and effectively without jargon.

JJ: 14:45

And as I'm revising, actually, my book manuscript right now, I'm able to more clearly see the impact of this approach to writing on my research and my advocacy goals.

JJ: 14:54

As you asked, and I would say, being able to, you know, write publicly and to engage various audiences beyond just researchers and academics is for me it's important to elevate the experiences in multiple spaces. It's important for me to really elevate the health and the activism of black communities, particularly black girls and women, and to do so in ways that challenge the pathologizing narratives about their bodies, lives and reproduction. That requires both mastering and getting a good sense of the scientific, the public health you know, their sort of academic research literature but also getting a sense of what people are saying in their own words, right, meeting them on your own terms and really understanding how they're crafting solution, political worlds and visions for themselves every day, right. That is often not documented, and so part of my goal is to really bridge the research with the advocacy and policy so that I can make tangible their needs to power holders that can make decisions about their lives.

IK: 15:54

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that really drew me to you. Like when we first were introduced to each other and I was learning about your work and kind of how you your scholarship, essentially I was like, wow, she has cracked the code on being an intellectual, an academic intellectual.

IK: 16:11

Who is, you know, checking off all of these, you know very stereotypical, like academic goals you know like get in the postdocs get in the tenure track job, Like you're killing it on that front, but you're also able to and it's not only able to, but you prioritize being able to make sure that your work is legible to the public, and I completely admire and have the utmost respect for that, because, you know, for me one of my biggest qualms with academia from from jump was this it felt like so separate from the real world and from real people and their real problems, and so I really really appreciate whenever I come across a scholar, especially a Black or male scholar, who is doing the thing like doing what they want us to do in the ivory tower, but still being really real and being grounded and doing the work on the ground.

JJ: 17:01

So I actually want to talk about some of your on the ground work.

IK: 17:05

You know your public scholar committed to political action, so not just writing about policy but actually organizing, which is another thing that academics love to just like talk about it and not be about it right. So can you share a little bit more about your role in co-leading birth equity and justice Massachusetts and the goals of this reproductive justice coalition? And I want to add one other question on. There is like how are you, how are you juggling the organizing with the writing, with the teaching? How are you juggling all of those things?

IK: 17:35

So part of the question was share more about your role in leading the organization. And then part two was juggling them all.

JJ: 17:41

Absolutely Wow, juggling them all. I feel like you and I could like side chat about what that juggle looks like on multiple levels, and then you just, you know, add motherhood in there, right? So, yes, that's an excellent question, and one of the things that I would say is I really admire and appreciate your work as well, and so, you know, it's lovely to kind of, it's lovely to kind of see this generation of people who are in academia really trying to bridge the sort of public scholarship work with academic research and the advocacy work with public impact works like this. So I see you, dr Cola, do your thing, and it's wonderful to be in community with you while doing it and so, so, yeah, so, birth equity and justice Massachusetts.

JJ: 18:27

I co-lead with my wonderful organizer, co-organizer, yamina Romulus, and the goal of Benjamin is really to expand inclusive tables of political leadership around reproductive justice in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth, and it's a black woman led RJ coalition that advances maternal health equity, reproductive health equity and policy and really aims to improve the health outcomes of black and brown birthing people through, I would say, collaboration, right Through a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary approach. And why is that important? Well, we're a body of clinicians, researchers, community leaders, faith leaders, advocates, policy advocates and birthing people and part of what drew us to this work. So, so, benjamin.

JJ: 19:21

So, benjamin was formed in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, where you had, you know, sort of shifting and changing hospital policies about, you know, birth support, about who could be present, and also you just had a lot of miscommunication about what the sort of regulations and practices and rules were that shaped the reproductive health and birthing and experiences of birthing people within medical institutions and hospital settings, and so the important role of birth workers, of reproductive justice organizers and advocates were so central to improving the experiences at a time when, you know, health institutions did not know what to do, and they were already pre-existent in the quality.

JJ: 20:05

So when you added COVID to an already, you know, problematic context of reproductive health care in the United States, it really magnified the issue. So Benjamin came in at this time and much of what the work is trying to do now right is reframe and reclaim birth by centering bodily autonomy, wellness and joy, as well as expanding the priority agendas and decision-making spaces to foreground the leadership and knowledge of black and brown people. Black women have been leading this work forever, but oftentimes it's white women's leadership that's prioritized, and even still there's a lot of clinical research and academic work that are about reproductive health and birthing that often isn't centered around the actual lived experiences of black birthing people, and so part of what we wanted to do was to really find ways to develop these evidence-based practices and interventions that shape the quality of care that's distributed within and beyond medical institutions. So that's what we do with Benjamin.

IK: 21:12

Nice, I love that. So I now want to talk about kind of going back to your academic work. We're, you know, flip-flopping. He's talking about organizing, talking about academic work, back and forth. What motivated you to pursue a career in academia? I feel like we've talked about the research component, you know, but there are plenty of people who, you know, conduct research but don't end up teaching. So why teach? What was? Yeah, why teach?

JJ: 21:43

Right, and what motivated me to pursue a career in academia? Yeah, what do I think about the moments that were most like intellectually stimulating for me in college and grad school? They were the times that set my soul on fire. It was being in classes where professors made academic work exciting, who challenged us, who expanded, who could be a knowledge producer and who made connections between rigorous intellectual work and everyday lived experiences Right, and in fact, I've challenged these divisions as well and I wanted to be that.

JJ: 22:14

That really excited me, and so, as a professor today, I'm like I do, I really aim to do that, but also I aim to make connections between everyday life and like social movements and political visions, and I wanted to have students see themselves in the work right and to see real life, knowledge and action and movement building action. And so the huge part of teaching for me is really those priorities and also to allow them to similarly set their soul on fire by engaging a piece, a piece of text or creating a project that allows them to put in action what they've been working or connecting, you know, these sort of high level theoretical works with some concrete action in a grassroots context or in the context of their campus. And so that that really is what motivates me to build a learning and classroom environment where we can literally connect these important intellectual you know concerns to everyday and urgent ethical, political and social issues.

IK: 23:17

Yeah, love it, love. I know, I know you're I don't know if they call it at Amherst but I know your evaluation scores are through the roof because you just seem like a very relatable instructor and professor and that is so rare and so valued in the academy. So kudos to you for doing the important work of educating our students, the next generation.

JJ: 23:41

And I hope the evaluation scores are through the roof. We don't know.

IK: 23:46

They are. I know they are. You know as an instructor and as someone who cares about how they are educating their scholars. I'm curious what are some of the biggest challenges that you see in the field of American studies and black studies? You know, especially in light of your very much on the ground research and advocacy work, as well as you know changing federal and state policies around how we educate about American history, about black studies, how you envision those fields evolving in the coming years and what role do you see yourself playing in those developments?

JJ: 24:26

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean it really takes the. It's a big question and so important when we consider the significance of like knowledge production and responding to these urgent political and social issues and I would say one of the biggest there, I think there are. There are multiple challenges and avenues and opportunities to to engage this. One of the biggest challenges that I see is I'm finding ways to amplify the sort of primary, primarily theoretical literature on like systemic racism or gender and sexuality, or like race and racial hierarchization.

JJ: 25:02

I think one of the one way that I see things being done is like around me, like when I see, like my peers or like friends who recently graduated graduate school and you know I think the future is here, and when I see my colleagues and, like you know, other sister scholars also, I know that the future is here.

JJ: 25:20

I think what I would see as my role in that is really collaborating and building communities together, intellectual communities and otherwise, where we can both create the spaces that we want to see intellectually, where we can, you know, create lecture series that are like working groups or workshops that allow us to build cross institutional relationships and really explode these disciplinary boundaries because of work on systemic racism, work on health equity, work on reproductive justice, work on gender and sexual queer politics, work on race, is going to require that we explore these, and I mean that's what we've been always doing is exploring, exploding these disciplinary boundaries so that we can more better, so that we can facilitate better engagement in an interdisciplinary lens to the to divide sort of the solution and or responses to, to these ever present issues that shape our lives.

IK: 26:15

Yeah, and I'm so excited to be doing that work with you, partially or in one way, through the Health Equity Podcast. You know we've got myself a historian, a medical historian, and yourself a medical humanist coming together and amplifying the stories and the voices of folks who are doing really groundbreaking and important activism and organizing around a variety of health disparity issues, health equity issues that are plating the black community. So I'm glad to be in your circle helping to start to build you know, sorry, not to build to break down those disciplinary boundaries and silos that often keep us disconnected from one another, absolutely.

IK: 26:57

So, as we start to wind down, we have two questions that we ask all of our guests on the CohortSysSys Podcast, and they are essentially a way for you to reflect on your doctoral journey. And so the first question is what is one thing, if anything, that you would do differently if you had to do your doctoral degree all over again? For some strange reason, you have to do it again what's something that you would do differently?

JJ: 27:18

The strange reason, I'm just just on strange reason.

JJ: 27:20

If I had to do it again, one of the things I would have done differently is probably not believe the deficit narrative sooner, so that I can have more mental space, capacity and room to just create and to just be early on in the graduate trajectory.

JJ: 27:47

And what I mean by that, by the deficit narrative, I feel like so many times you're told you know you're battling imposter syndrome or you're, you know, battling thoughts or grappling with thoughts about.

JJ: 27:59

You know you're not good enough or you need to read like 500 more like books and articles to feel like you can say, like one claim or one statement, or you have an encounter or an engagement with you know someone within the space that makes you, you know, doubt the quality or impact of your work or the significance of your state, the stakes and claims of your research and intervention.

JJ: 28:21

And I generally had a supportive experience and I've also seen moments where experiences that I or my other you know, peers or friends had that you know that really made it hard to just create and produce the great, great, brilliant work that they were not only selected to produce but also that they like, that they have full capacity and brilliance to be able to produce. And so I think that deficit narrative, I think I would just push back against that sooner, or before defending my doctoral, before defending that, these, before defending the dissertation, and even before sort of defending the, the prospectus, right like just early on, just like engage, be present in the work and you know and not believe what academia tells you about yourself. Yeah, that's what I would. That's certainly what I would have changed.

IK: 29:18

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I feel like there's a Misconception and I'm also reflecting on my own personal experience. There's like a misconception between being academically prepared for graduate school. I felt like I was very academically prepared. I had also done, you know, summer research programs and tons of research experience. I knew exactly what I was gonna write my dissertation on, like from day one. But there's a completely different work of like being emotionally and psychologically prepared and a lot of that is like having the confidence and the self-esteem and the Self-affirming language in order to hype yourself up every day, every semester, and to not like let those Sentiments about, like you know, maybe I was, no, I'm not, maybe I'm not supposed to be here, or like maybe this was an accident, like to not let those thoughts like permeate your mind.

IK: 30:12

And I feel like that's really the work that you know. When I think about, like, what the mission of cohorts is, it's not to make people smart, smarter, so I think again, it's a doctoral program. Like that's not. That's not what we need. Like what we need is to be able to affirm and uplift and really encourage ourselves that we have the mental fortitude and the Self-affirmations and the confidence in order to continue persevering, to continue doing the amazing work so that our brilliant research and brilliant ideas come to the fore and really be shared in the world.

JJ: 30:42

So I'm so glad you brought that up, that that's good to me as well and and I think it's an it you mentioned you describe it well like it's also an iterative process, right like of redefining, of claiming, reclaiming and of self-validating, and I think the moments that was done so well is when I was in community with other people. So I'm so glad to see the work that cohorts this is just doing to build that intergenerational community, because I think that's so crucial.

IK: 31:09

Yeah, yes, I love it. So last question what is one piece of advice that you have for prospective students or current black women and non-binary doctoral students? Just one last nugget that you want to share for the people.

JJ: 31:23

That is an excellent question and I think the one advice that there's so much right, but I think the one advice that I think is incredibly, that was incredibly salient for me, was To quiet the noise.

JJ: 31:38

Build your team of cheerleaders and that's not only professors, that's professors, educators, and that's also your like friends. That's also people that you meet at conferences. That's people that you are. They're going to be a part of your network expansion at different stages of the career. Know that and knowing that that community, right, like that community, is going to help you get through the moments where it feels really difficult, right, that community is gonna help you build perseverance and endurance and you're going to contribute that community, contribute to that community as well for other people. So I think for me, community was everything and in a in, in a profession like ours that prioritizes, like the isolationist experience of knowledge production and being the only one in this Department or in this institution or in this field with this only idea that only you crafted ever, I think community is so central, yeah, and it's life-giving yes, no, you're, you're so right.

IK: 32:43

I'm glad you contrasted it against like the traditional frameworks of Individuality that are, you know, really a product of white supremacy in academia, and I love that we are Not just us, but a lot of people are turning that upside down and saying like, no, we don't care about only being the first author on all these publications like we don't we don't care about all these accolades Like we want to do this work in community with other people.

IK: 33:09

So thank you so much, dr Dolly, for being with us on the cohort sisters podcast. I'm excited to continue following along your work and having the opportunity to share your amazing, amazing work and the way that you bridge research and advocacy and activism and teaching to the public to the public and to your students. So thanks again for being on the podcast.

JJ: 33:31

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. I love the work that you're doing with cohort sisters and Please stay tuned. Via Instagram, I am Jalicia, and also via my lab, breha Breha. The Breha collective, which is a black feminist reproductive justice, equity and HIV. It's activism collective, which is a new interdisciplinary lab that elevates the political activism and experiences in health of Afrodiasporic women, girls and gender diverse people and our shared and divergent struggles against reproductive injustice. Stay tuned.

IK: 34:03

I Love that. We'll make sure to include how to find you and connect and support your work in the show notes. Thanks again. Thank you again for listening to this week's episode of the cohort sisters podcast. If you are a black woman interested in joining the cohort sisters membership community or you're looking for more information on how to support or partner with cohort sisters, please visit our website at wwwcohortsistascom. You can also find us on all social media platforms at cohort sisters. Don't forget to subscribe to the cohort sisters podcast and leave us a quick review wherever you're listening. Thank you so much for joining us this week and we'll catch you in next week's episode.