Mapping Malcolm (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2024) comprises a collection of conversations, essays, and visual art by artists, community organizers, and scholars who think, create, and write broadly at the intersection of power and space making with a particular focus on New York City and Harlem. Curated and edited by Mona Oraby (TIF editor and Howard University) in honor of Malcolm X’s centennial birthday, the purpose of this forum is twofold: to introduce Mapping Malcolm to religious studies scholars and to enact critical thinking about the proper stewardship of power so central to the thought and praxis of Malcolm X.

This forum features reflections by Parker Blair (Northwestern University), Alaina M. Morgan (University of Southern California), Iman AbdoulKarim (Yale University), and Malachi D. Crawford (Prairie View A&M University), who each respond to a chapter of Mapping Malcolm. The forum is bookended by two conversations. In their opening conversation, Oraby and Najha Zigbi-Johnson, editor of Mapping Malcolm, discuss Malcolm X’s legacy, bridging academic scholarship and community-based intellectual work, editorial practice, and the need for critical, transdisciplinary research. The concluding conversation is written by Joanna Joseph, Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt, and Meriam Soltan, the editors who acquired and published Mapping Malcolm. In responding to questions posed by Oraby, they elaborate on the decolonial vision that motivates their editorial work.