The Richards Center and Africana Research Center is excited to announce that Maryam Aziz has accepted our Postdoctoral Scholar in African-American History position for the 2020-21 year! Maryam Aziz is a Ph.D. candidate in American Culture at The University of Michigan. She will defend her dissertation, “Built With our Empty Fists: The Rise and Circulation of Black Power Martial Arts” this May. The project explores why community organizers practiced or depicted martial arts and unarmed self-defense during the Black Power Era. It looks at how this phenomenon was informed shaped by U.S. militarism and transformed notions of manhood and womanhood in 20th-century Black activism. During her tenure at the Richards Center, she will prepare her book proposal and begin researching her second project, which historicizes martial arts within women’s organizing in the late 20^th century. A scholar-practitioner, Maryam has an extensive background in Japanese-descended martial arts. On campuses and in local communities, she has taught inclusive, anti-hate crime self-defense workshops based on her research. 1n 2016, she created a series of accessible videos called the Self-Defense Starter Kit. As a publicly engaged scholar, she served as an Assistant Curator and Research Assistant for the 2017 Schomburg Center Exhibit, Black Power!, which commemorated the 50^th anniversary of the movement. She also serves as one of the Assistant Directors for the Schomburg Center’s Mellon Summer Humanities Institute for rising seniors.