Dr. Brian Foster, a renowned sociologist and ethnographer who explores the personal experiences of Black communities in the rural South, will join the Africana Studies department as the Fall Citizen Fellow.
Foster will spend two weeks interacting with students and faculty through a variety of events, offering a chance to dive deeper into race, place and the sociopolitical forces that shape Black life in America.
Author of “I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life” and “Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight,” Foster is known for his nuanced scholarship on the complexities of Black Southern life. His work examines the intersections of race, media, industry and identity, with a focus on the commercialization of blues music in the Mississippi Delta.
Foster’s visit will include a variety of events designed to engage the Lehigh community. His public lecture, “Race in the Archive,” will explore how racialized identities are preserved, erased or distorted in historical and cultural records.
He will also lead a walk-and-talk event at the Lehigh University Art Galleries, where he will explore the work of Nellie Mae Rowe, a Southern artist whose drawings and paintings reflect her experiences as a Black woman in the South.
In addition to these larger events, Foster will host smaller group discussions, offering students and faculty more intimate opportunities to engage with his work.
“For a lot of people I’ve spoken with, the blues isn’t just music,” Foster said. “It’s a lived experience, a story about loss, struggle, survival.”
Foster said when experiences are commodified, packaged and sold without respecting their true nature, it creates a distance between the music and the people who lived it.
He said he aims to challenge commonly held notions about the South, which is often depicted as both a site of racial trauma and Black cultural production.
He said this division oversimplifies the reality of life in the region.
“The South is more than just a place,” Foster said. “It’s a set of ideas, histories and assumptions that carry a lot of weight when we talk about race and culture.”
In addition to his written work, Foster also expresses his ethnographic research through film.
He said these 12-minute films enable him to capture the lived realities of Black Southern communities in ways that written words sometimes can’t.
“When you’re sitting with someone in their home, or walking with them through their neighborhood, you see things, body language, silences between words, that can’t always be captured in a transcript,” Foster said. “Film allows me to tell those stories differently.”
Foster’s films provide a platform for Black voices that are often marginalized or misrepresented. Through his work, he seeks to create space for individuals to share their own stories, free from external interpretation.
He highlights how Black Southern life is often narrated through someone else’s lens.
Foster said he wants to focus on the voices and experiences of those who live it every day, shaping both individual and collective identities, as film lets him examine how people connect to the land they live on and how they navigate the social and economic forces that shape their lives.
“Film allows me to explore how identity is constructed, not just in terms of race, but also place and space,” Foster said.
Latoya Council and John Villanova, two professors in the Africana Studies program, arranged Foster’s visit to campus, as Villanova said the two recognized the potential benefits of his work.
Villanova said Foster could offer students a rare opportunity to engage with a scholar whose research crosses disciplinary boundaries.
He also said providing a visual window into the day-to-day realities of Black life in the South pushes students to think more deeply about the societal and cultural forces at play.
“(Foster’s films) allow audiences to see and feel the experiences of people in ways that written scholarship alone often can’t capture,” Villanova said. “It’s rare to find a scholar who can connect so seamlessly with both academic and non-academic audiences.”
Council said Foster’s perspective challenges traditional discussions about Black southerners at Northern institutions like Lehigh.
“His work is deeply rooted in place and history,” Council said. “It challenges us to think about Black identity as something shaped by not only race, but geography, economy and industry.”
Council said Foster’s program of research adds necessary nuance to discussions of Black people in the U.S.
While Lehigh’s student body is diverse, Council believes Foster’s Southern perspective provides a crucial counterpoint to the predominantly Northern and urban context in which discussions of race typically occur.
“I think (Foster’s) work will resonate deeply with our students, particularly our Black students,” Council said. “It’s a chance for them to see their experiences reflected in his work and for the broader student body to gain a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be Black in America.”
Foster said the goal of his visit is to share his research and encourage meaningful conversations about the complexities of race and identity in the U.S.
“I’m excited to be part of that conversation at Lehigh, and I look forward to learning as much from the students as they do from me,” Foster said.
Public events led by Foster will continue through Oct. 18.
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