Histories that Touch the Body

In this episode of Conscious Conversations, Mmabatho Montse is joined by Dr. Christy Garrison-Harrison, historian, educator, and womanist scholar—for a profound exploration of how histories linger in the body, shaping Black life through memory, resistance, and radical re-membering. Together, they delve into the ways colonialism, racial capitalism, and spatial segregation inscribe trauma across generations, while also giving rise to ancestral resilience and epistemic agency. Drawing on Black Feminist Geographies, Womanist historiography, and embodied pedagogy, the conversation reflects on how the Black woman’s body becomes both an archive and a compass—a site where grief, healing, and political consciousness coalesce. Dr. Garrison-Harrison shares her own genealogical journey, educational praxis, and community scholarship as a way of interrupting erasure and re-centering Black women’s lives as sites of knowledge and sacred story. Dr. Christy Garrison-Harrison is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of New York at Buffalo and Assistant Professor of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her research focuses on the American South, Black women’s political leadership, Black Womanist Geographies, and the cultural dynamics of White American matriarchy. Her recent and forthcoming publications include an essay for Emory University’s HBCU project and co-editing Africana Women’s History, as well as manuscripts on Black women’s activism and antebellum matriarchal culture. This episode invites listeners to return to the body not only as a site of pain, but as a living repository of historical consciousness and transformative possibility.