Camilla Hawthorne (UC Santa Cruz), John Gennari (University of Vermont); Michael Whalen (Santa Clara U); and Christina Zanfagna, (Santa Clara University), for BLACKITALIAN, a documentary project.

Camilla Hawthorne (University of California, Santa Cruz, Sociology/Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) has studied the politics of race, citizenship, and Blackness in Italy and the wider Mediterranean region for over a decade. Dr. Hawthorne’s publications include The Black Resistance: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke UP, 2023) and Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (2021).

Michael Whalen is the Knight-Ridder/ San Jose Mercury News Professor in the dept of Communication at Santa Clara University. A member of the Directors Guild of America since 1996, Whalen has either written, produced or directed important television documentaries and series for Fox, A&E, The Discovery Channel, NBC, MTV, and TLC. Whalen has also produced numerous award-winning independent documentary films, on a variety of social issues including A Christmas in Tent City (2008), A Question of Habit (PBS, 2011), Gringos at the Gate (2012 – on US/Mexican relations and national identity through soccer rivalry), and The Farmer & The Chef (2014, on culinary
sustainable food). He also authored a docudrama, Can’t Thread a Moving Needle (2015), about sexual assaults on college campuses.

John Gennari (University of Vermont, English/Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) is an American Studies-trained U.S. cultural historian with specializations in music, race, and cultural criticism. He is the author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Christina Zanfagna (Santa Clara University, Music/Ethnic Studies) is an
ethnomusicologist whose research explores the intersections of Black popular music, race, and urban space. Dr. Zanfagna’s writing has appeared in many publications, including The Beat, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Black Music Research Journal, The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music and Sound Studies, The Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop. Her book Holy Hip Hop in the City of Los Angeles (UC Press, 2017) explores the cultural politics of gospel rap in Los Angeles.