The Epic of Sunjata is a living, evolving text, still performed by griots and griottes. Taught alongside more traditional European epics, The Sunjata offers students a wider lens with which to look at the medieval world.

Margo Hendricks offers her insights into what exactly premodern critical race studies is (especially in comparison to premodern race studies), and what it means to be a practitioner within this field.

Justin P. Shaw is interested in how appropriation can mean theft as well as “making something new.” Using a framework of Black music and the history of appropriation of the Blues to shed light on Desdemona’s memory of Barbary’s song in Shakespeare's Othello, Shaw asks the question: where is the line between tribute and theft?