Lavelle Porter

Lavelle Porter

Lavelle Porter is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center, and a B.A. in history from Morehouse College. His writing has appeared in venues such as The New Inquiry, Black Perspectives, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Foundation. He is the author of The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual, Northwestern University Press, 2019.

The covers of the book Erasure by Percival Everett and the film American Fiction

The Indelible Lessons of Erasure

A Percival Everett fan weighs in on the novelist’s approach to racial satire and considers the translation of Erasure to the big screen in American Fiction.

Samuel Delany at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York

Ode to Samuel Delany

Composed half-a-century ago, The Ballad of Beta-2 was a science-fiction vision of the future that speaks directly to our present.

Lucille Clifton posing for a photograph; Louisa H. Bowen University Archives and Special Collections; Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Remembering Her Memories: Lucille Clifton’s Generations in Our Time

The poet stares history down in an artful, Whitman-infused exploration of traumas her family endured and survived.

Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden’s Relatable Fatigue

There’s a constant attention to the burdens of history in Robert Hayden’s poems. Even amid the beauties of life, the ghosts of the past linger.

Whitman at about fifty

Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?

Black America talks back to "The Good Gray Poet" at 200.

Bill Cosby

What Does Bill Cosby’s Problematic Legacy Mean for Black Colleges?

The Cosbys gave Spelman College, one of America's 107 HBCUs, over $20 million dollars. What does his legacy mean for the future of black colleges?

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

Iran’s Protest Culture

A succession of authoritarian regimes birthed a strong tradition of collective action.

Education & Society

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine on the Strengths of the Medical Humanities

An interview with Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, who explores the parallels in historical events with contemporary public health practice and policies.

From Oriental Riviera to Global Asia: Hong Kong in Travel Posters

A collection of travel posters shared via JSTOR by Hong Kong Baptist University highlights Hong Kong’s unique place in the global imagination over the decades.

Politics & History

How to be a Modern Autocrat

In the twenty-first century, dictators are less likely than their predecessors to use violence to suppress dissent, cultivating instead “informational autocracies.”

Science & Technology

Life According to Phosphorus

Phosphorus is essential for fertilizing high-yield agriculture. The US domestic supply, restricted to Florida, is expected to run out in a couple of decades.