Welcome to karida.eth

Social commentary and scholarly musings of a Blackademic

Hi there,

I am launching this newsletter to build an intellectual community with a motley crew of people who are, like me, unboundedly curious about social issues, past and present. More than just offering “my take” on things, I intend to add value to our community by offering expertise on topics where I have skin in the game. Here I bring my perspective as a scholar, an educator, an entrepreneur, and as a free Black woman.

Painting title: Orb

by: Charly Palmer

A little bit about me

I am a Professor of Sociology at Emory University. My scholarship focuses on Black life, history, and culture. It also examines the making of the modern world under the historical condition of racial and colonial capitalism. In addition to my work as a professor, I own a boutique consulting company that creates bridges between social scientific research and the public through arts and culture.

Before academia, I worked as an underwriter at several multi-national insurance firms, such as AIG and Zurich North America. I am the daughter of two loving parents who hail from the coal towns of the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky. I am a Black woman living in her divine feminine energy, who has a mild obsession with blockchain technology (cryptocurrency, NFTs, the metaverse, and the tokenization of everything) and a deep love for Black art.

I have lived many lives in my soon-to-be 40 years on earth. Some of that time has been rather mundane, and I’ve certainly had a few blips of woe and hardship along the way--bad relationships, living in debt/check-to-check, and loosing too many loved ones to count. However, in the grand scheme of things most of my life has been ridiculously charmed.

I’ve travelled the world, cultivated a successful career across three complex industries, had the pleasure of teaching over 1,000 amazing undergraduate students (and counting), made our first milly through crypto investing, married the love of my life, and even won an NBA Championship ring. I am currently working on three book projects and am relishing in the writing process (my happy place).

I will be writing about all these things here.

More than a newsletter

karida.eth is a catalog of ideas and a documentary of the peripatetic creative journey of an art-collecting, crypto-investing, entrepreneurial, Blackademic. Personally, I value empathy, the dignity and meaning I find in hard work, deep research, serious thinking, human connection, and most of all love. I try to incorporate these values into my praxis in business, teaching, writing, and investing. This is the spirit in which I come to you in this newsletter.