By the time Louis Chude-Sokei joined the senior editorial team of TBS, in 2013, his list of scholarly achievements was impressive. Editing a journal of Black Studies, however, was not among them. I knew, though, that he would provide just what was needed to transition TBS into the 21st century. Within a year I happily handed over the Editor-in-Chief reins to him. A project of modernization and revitalization led to total overhaul: new publisher, new design and format, new production personnel, new editorial board, formal peer review, new submission protocols, new intellectual priorities and directions. Over the last ten years, TBS has flourished under Louis’ inspired editorship. It has established a new home for cutting edge scholarship, for contemporary debate and conversation. Louis has found new ways to maintain the original inter-disciplinary, public-facing, socially-engaged mission of TBS: to provide a meeting house for ‘the academy’ and ‘the street’, where the arts, social sciences, and the humanities commingle, where interviews, roundtables, forums, personal essays, and artwork provide alternative forms of knowledge that command as much attention and acclaim as traditionally academic, peer-reviewed articles.
Prior to Louis, TBS had not given space to questions of sexuality, pleasure, desire, and eroticism; since 2015, they have been front and center in the journal’s reckoning with Black lives.
At a time when the meanings and practices of Pan-Africanism, of Black internationalism, of decolonization and globalization are being rethought, Louis has responded by updating TBS’s coverage of Black peoples across the world. He has deepened and widened the journal’s explorations of Black identity in the Americas, just as he has with its ecological and environmental criticism. He’s given a rightfully prominent place to digital/social media studies and technology. Commitment to chart and parse political activism is undimmed, and can be found on this website as in the printed journal. Writing about the arts now includes multimedia expression, performance studies, and aesthetic experimentation. Another cornerstone of TBS, its debates about Black feminism and gender studies, has undergone dramatic expansion and transformation, under Louis’s leadership, as has its writing on theory and philosophy. The journal has continued to examine the legacy of our Black elder visionaries, organizers, and cultural producers, even as it recognizes and showcases the contributions to Black knowledge being made by an emergent generation.
And let’s not omit aesthetic matters. TBS’s original, innovative graphic design was pivotal to its early success. Under Louis’ watch, the last ten years have brought that visual flair back into the foreground. The journal has revived its tradition of striking front covers, beginning with the new graphic design template and many covers created by John Jennings, and continued with collaborative work between Production and Operations Manager Shannon Hanks-Mackey, guest editors, and Louis. A huge thanks to all of them for their part in making the journal a showcase for contemporary Black artists. Our front cover success story is just one example of how, throughout his TBS editorship, Louis has developed fruitful relationships with editorial personnel, including the many guest editors who have contributed to this extraordinary decade. He has facilitated and encouraged the work of other editors as well as proving to be a superlative editor himself.
Louis, we will miss you profoundly. Thank you for all that you have given us, behind the scenes as well as in print. Thanks for your passion, brilliance, generosity, imagination, and energy. Go well, and keep in touch.
– Laura Chrisman
Director, The Robert Chrisman Foundation
Owner, The Black Scholar
