Crystal Fleming didn’t intend to become a social scientist and Black studies scholar.

As a high school student, she spent summers as an intern in the lab of a cancer researcher and considered majoring in biology at Wellesley College. 

She decided on a different path, however, after taking “transformative” courses in sociology and other fields. Fleming, who is a professor of Africana studies at Smith College, recalls the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship as “life-changing.” The program, which prepares undergraduate students for Ph.D. programs and careers as professors in the humanities and social sciences, dovetailed perfectly with her budding interest in interdisciplinary scholarship. It gave her access to support and resources she needed to create her own independent research and start determining the kinds of questions she might want to explore over the course of her career. 

“It allowed me to begin to imagine a career as an academic and doing what I came to specialize in, which is qualitative research,” Fleming says.

And explore, she has: with encouragement from mentors at Wellesley, Fleming also discovered a love of language, majoring in both French and sociology, and began a lifelong engagement with the study of race, history, and the African diaspora. As an undergraduate, she traveled abroad for the first time, spending a semester in the south of France. Fleming went on to earn her doctorate and master’s degree in sociology from Harvard, where she was elected President of the Graduate Student Organization and helped organize the first university-wide day of service. 

Fleming lived in Paris for several years as a Ph.D. student and, later, as a visiting scholar, conducting research on antiracist activism and the commemoration of slavery in France. Today, she is a noted author, professor, and speaker on everything from global racism and Black feminism to collective memory and spirituality. Before joining the faculty at Smith in 2024, she served as a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University.

Ahead of her sabbatical, Fleming discussed her path to Smith, her teaching experience, and current research projects, including an exploration of the Black experience in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

What drew you to Smith? 
“Before coming to Smith, I had the privilege of working with and getting to know colleagues here in a number of different capacities. At the invitation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, I delivered the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day keynote in 2021, and was honored to be chosen the following year, in 2022, as the Cromwell Day speaker. I also had an opportunity to get to know Smith when I was hired as an external expert to lead workshops for faculty on antiracist pedagogy and racial literacy in teaching. All of these experiences provided me with a unique lens on the institution before joining the faculty.

What do you enjoy about teaching here?
“I love the interdisciplinary intellectual life I’ve been able to build here at Smith in just a little more than two years. Of course, I have wonderful colleagues in Africana studies doing important and exciting work across the diaspora. I also hold an appointment in the program for the study of women, gender, and sexuality and am affiliated with sociology. I’ve also been able to return to some of my earlier interests in the natural sciences through an ongoing collaboration with colleagues in math and chemistry with support from the Conway Center and the Arts Afield program [at MacLeish Field Station]. All of this cross-fertilization is made possible by the resources and support we have here at the College. Being at Smith also allows for me to bridge my research and my teaching in a way that, I hope, is engaging for students and very much connected to my values. I feel very empowered to craft courses that are intellectually rich, rigorous, and capacious in terms of their thematic and geographic scope. Right now, for example, I’m developing a course on Afro-Asia with the support of a Rappaport Fellowship and will be working on this during my sabbatical trip to Japan.”

Do you have a favorite course that you teach?
“It’s hard to pick a favorite! I think it’s pretty dope that I get to develop and teach courses that touch on a range of cultural histories throughout the African diaspora, like ‘Black Joy’ and ‘Black Magic: Africana Encounters with the Paranormal.’ I must say that my ‘Black Europe’ course is also a lot of fun for me as it feels like coming full circle, going back to my own experiences learning about race and diasporic experiences in France as an undergraduate.

I also love returning to the topic of Black Europe through the lens that Smith students bring to the table. So many interesting, incisive questions come up in class, things I’ve never thought about myself. It’s wonderful getting to know our brilliant Smithies, many of whom are eager to do the work and go beyond the syllabus to explore their own interests in African diasporic identities and histories in European contexts. It’s been really fun. In fact, I’ve enjoyed teaching the class so much that I’m currently planning a Black Europe Global Flex study abroad program in collaboration with the Lewis Global Studies Center that we hope to launch in 2028.”

Can you talk a bit about your current ethnographic study of Black life, leisure, and placemaking in Provincetown?
“Provincetown is a place that is coded, culturally and socially, as overwhelmingly white, and where Black people and people of African descent are often rendered as invisible. But this doesn’t reflect my experience at all. I’ve been visiting Provincetown for over five years and I see Black people every day I’m there: tourists, residents, artists, workers. Provincetown is a place of great historical and cultural significance: it’s the first stop the Pilgrims made on the way to Plymouth, was widely known as a Portuguese fishing village, became the oldest continuous arts colony in the country, and is now one of the most popular—and expensive—LGBTQ+ destinations in the world. But it also has an important and understudied history of African American presence and Afro-diasporic immigration. 

People of African descent have lived and labored on the Outer Cape for centuries. These days, if you walk down Commercial Street, the main drag in Provincetown, at six in the morning, many of the people who are opening the businesses, some of the people who own the businesses, are often Jamaicans. There are also local events like Juneteenth and Womxn of Color Weekend which involve Black community members, artists and tourists. 

I’ve been exploring Black life in Provincetown and the Outer Cape through qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and historical research. I’ve also gotten to know some of the Black residents who live there year round. So far, it’s been one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my career, and it’s also the first time that I’m doing research that centers Black LGBTQ+ perspectives. I love Provincetown, and I feel really privileged to be able to meet and talk with so many fascinating, deeply thoughtful Black folks about their perspectives on this very special and unusual place in Massachusetts.”