Audio Library
Clayborn Carson
Interviewer: Umniya Najaer, Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
Interviewee: Dr. Clayborn Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of History, emeritus, at Stanford University.
Date: May 9, 2023.
Location: Virtual
John Russell Rickford
Interviewer: Umniya Najaer, Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
Interviewee: Dr. John Russel Rickford, J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, at Stanford University.
Date: May 8th May 19th, May 22nd, 2023.
Location: Stanford University
Bio: Dr. John Russel Rickford was born in 1949 in Guyana, the youngest of 10 siblings. Dr. Rickford earned his BA from UC Santa Cruz in 1971, and earned a PhD in Linguistics from UPenn in 1979. In 1980 he joined the Stanford faculty, where he taught for 40 years, until his retirement in 2019. Professor Rickford is renowned for his work on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and research on pidgin and creole languages, especially, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican and Barbadian/Bajan. He has published 16 books on linguistics, including Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, won the 2000 American book award.
Transcript of Clayborn Carson Audio
Transcript of John Russell Rickford Audio
Sandra Drake on St. Clair Drake
Interviewer: Umniya Najaer, Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
Interviewee: Dr. Sandra Drake, Professor of English, Emeritus at Stanford University.
Date: May 19, 2023.
Location: Stanford University
Bio: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Professor Sandra Drake about her father, St. Clair Drake. Dr. St. Claire Drake was born on January 2, 1911 in Suffolk Virginia. His father was from Barbados and his mom from Virginia. He earned his BA in Biology from Hampton University and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Chicago. A few of his most notable works are Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, co-authored with Horace R. Clayton Jr published in 1945 and considered to this day a landmark study in Urban Studies. He taught Sociology at Roosevelt University from 1946-1968. The following year (1969) Drake founded the African and African American Studies program at Stanford, where he taught until his retirement in 1976. St. Claire Drake transitioned from earth on June 15, 1990 and continues to be widely celebrated. Both the AAAS Program at Stanford and the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley have annual lectures named after St. Claire Drake to honor his contributions.
Sandra Drake
Interviewer: Umniya Najaer, Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
Interviewee: Dr. Sandra Drake, Professor of English, Emeritus at Stanford University.
Date: May 19, 2023.
Location: Stanford University
Bio: Dr. Sandra Drake was born in 1946 in Chicago and spent her childhood between the US, Ghana, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Drake earned her undergraduate degree in anthropology from Stanford in 1966 and a master’s in 1973 and a PhD in comparative literature in 1977. Professor Sandra Drake taught African American Studies and Literature in the English department until her retirement in 2004. Her publications include the critical study Wilson Harris and the Modern Tradition: A New Architecture of the World, the novel A Kind of Wrath, and the paper “All That Foolishness/That All Foolishness: Race and Caribbean Culture as Thematics of Liberation in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea."
Transcript of Sandra Drake on St. Clair Drake Audio
Transcript of Sandra Drake Audio
Ewart Thomas
Interviewer: Umniya Najaer, Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature.
Interviewee: Dr. Ewart Thomas, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus at Stanford University.
Date: May 15, 2023.
Location: Virtual
Bio: Dr. Ewart Thomas was born in 1942 in Guyana. He was the only boy amongst his six sisters. Dr. Thomas earned his BA in Mathematics from University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He went on to earn a PhD in Statistics from the University of Cambridge in 1967. In 1972 he joined the Stanford faculty, where he taught until his retirement in {2017}. During his tenure at Stanford, he earned a LLD from the University of the West Indies ( LLD is an honorary law degree of the highest qualification awarded to individuals for contributions of particular excellence.) Professor Thomas is renowned for his work in psychology, statistical methods, and theoretical and experimental analyses of information processing, equity, and of small-group processes.