Babette Thomas is a radio producer, artist, writer and PhD student at Yale University in the departments of African-American and American Studies. They’ve worked at institutions such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of African American History, SF MOMA and NPR. In their work, they explore how new media (specifically sound media) can be used to tell Black history and Black stories in ways that are tangible, educational and accessible.
They produce podcasts, radio stories and sound works about Black history and culture. They also use their research skills and knowledge of histories of cultural production to digitize in-house exhibitions at museums and cultural centers.
Broadly interested in the intersections of Blackness and media, their research explores how Black subjects have historically engaged with varioius forms of new media. Their forthcoming dissertation, “Can You Hear Me Now? 20th Century Black Feminist Soundwork in Transmission and Reception” is about Black women and girls’ relationship to the radio during the mid-to-late twentieth century.
Babette holds a B.A. from Brown University in Africana Studies (Honors) and Modern Culture and Media.
Panels &Talks
“Now Here This: A Model of College Community Storytelling,” Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2019
“Ethical Audio Stories: Teaching in the Age of the Sonic Color Line,” John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, Brown University, 2019
“Rekindle: Using Radical Soundwork of the Past to Guide Us Beyond the Present Reckoning,” Third Coast Audio Festival, 2020
"Visions of Black Futurity,” On Air Fest, 2022
Exhibitions
“NEW INC's DEMO2023 Future Memory Flash Everything Party,” CARA, 2023
“SORRY, A Live Listening Party,” The RISD Museum, 2018
“CounterPoint,” DesignMarch, 2019
Fellowships, Awards & Residencies
Royce Fellowship, Brown University, 2019
Digital Humanities Fellowship, EOS Africana, 2019
Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2019
This Will Take Time Residency, Oakland, March 2021
SF MOMA Podcaster-In-Residence, 2021-2022
Artist Disruptor and Culture Bearer Award, The Center for Cultural Power & The California Arts Council, 2023
California Documentary Project Research and Development Grant Recipient, California Humanities, 2023
Press
Finding Kinship in the Archive: A Conversation with Babette Thomas, SF MOMA
"Black Art Was Her Language”: Searching For The Mother of a Movement, East Bay Yesterday
Rightnowish Presents: 'Visions of Black Futurity' from Raw Material, KQED
“Visions of Black Futurity” by Babette Thomas, podcaster in residence for SF MOMA’s Raw Material Podcast, Yale University