New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Robin J. Hayes, "Love for Liberation: African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground" (U Washington Press, 2021)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the height of the Cold War, passionate idealists across the US and Africa came together to fight for Black self-determination and the antiracis...
Steven P. Brown, "Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steven P. Brown, professor of political science at Auburn University, has written a history of notable U.S. Supreme Cases and justices that hailed fro...
Jasmine Mitchell, "Imagining the Mulatta: Blackness in U. S. and Brazilian Media" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brazil markets itself as a racially mixed utopia. The United States prefers the term melting pot. Both nations have long used the image of the mulatta...
James G. Cantres, "Blackening Britain: Caribbean Radicalism from Windrush to Decolonization" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Covering the period from the interwar years through the arrival of the steamship SS Empire Windrush from Jamaica in 1948 and culminating in the period...
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, "The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South" (UNC Press, 2021)
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning on the shores of West Africa in the sixteenth century and ending in the U.S. Lower South on the eve of the Civil War, Alexis Wells-Oghoghome...
Efrén O. Pérez, "Diversity's Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Efrén Pérez’s new book, Diversity's Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity (U Chicago Press, 2021), explores th...
David Lester, "Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel" (Beacon Press, 2021)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who is the most fascinating historical figure that you have never heard of? David Lester and Marcus Rediker make a good case that it was Benjamin Lay....
Rachel Afi Quinn, "Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dominican women being seen--and seeing themselves--in the media Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women r...
Alaina E. Roberts, "I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of 40 acres and a mule--the lost promise of Black reparations for sla...
Zakiya Luna, "Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice" (NYU Press, 2020)
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did reproductive justice—defined as the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent—become recognized as a human rights issue?...
Jovan Scott Lewis, "Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is romance in stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but how does that change when those perceived rich are elderly white North Americans a...
Ruby Hamad, "White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color" (Catapult, 2020)
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Called “powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, Ruby Hamad's White Tear...
Habiba Ibrahim, "Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life" (NYU Press, 2021)
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time...
Imani Perry on a Life in African American Studies
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s podcast, I am chopping it up with my dear friend and play cousin Dr. Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studie...
Alice L Baumgartner, "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War" (Basic Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For some enslaved Americans, the path to freedom led not north, but south, argues Dr. Alice Baumgardner, an assistant professor of history at the Univ...
Lindsey Stewart, "The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism" (Northwestern UP, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What can southern Black joy teach us about agency? What role does refusal have in liberation? What more might there be to root work than resistance? I...
Catherine Knight Steele, "Digital Black Feminism" (NYU Press, 2021)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How have Black women lead a digital revolution? In Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press, 2021), Catherine Knight Steele, an assistant professor of co...
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey, "The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is...
Erica R. Edwards, "The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2021)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Erica R. Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire (New York University, 2021) reveals the troubling intimac...
Anne Pollock, "Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-B...
Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coa...
Robert C. Schwaller, "African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama: A History in Documents" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1520s through the 1580s, thousands of African slaves fled captivity in Spanish Panama and formed their own communities in the interior of the...
Takkara K. Brunson, "Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba" (U Florida Press, 2021)
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba (University of Florida Press, 2021), Dr. Takkara Brunson examines the political strategie...
Pamela J. Prickett, "Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Pamela J. Prickett is an ethnographic study o...
Vanessa M. Holden, "Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The local community around the Nat Turner rebellion The 1831 Southampton Rebellion led by Nat Turner involved an entire community. Vanessa M. Holden r...
Priya Kandaswamy, "Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform" (Duke UP, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform (Duke UP, 2021), Priya Kandaswamy analyzes how race,...
Minna Salami, "Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone" (Amistad, 2021)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Minna Salami's book Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2021) is a collection of thought provoking e...
Karla Slocum, "Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West" (UNC Press, 2019)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Oklahoma's Black towns aren't just places of the past - they maintain an enduring allure, and look toward the future, argues Karla Slocum in her new b...
Luke Epplin, "Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball" (Flatiron Books, 2021)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Ba...
Farah Jasmine Griffin, "Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature" (Norton, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before Farah Jasmine Griffin’s father died, he wrote to her a note ending with a line “read until you understand.” He would die years later when...
Gene Slater, "Free to Discriminate: How the Nation's Realtors Created Housing Segregation and the Conservative Vision of American Freedom" (Hayday Books, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Gene Slater's book Free to Discriminate: How the Nation's Realtors Created Housing Segregation and the Conservative Vision of American Freedom (Hayd...
Thomas Aiello, "The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity" (Duke UP, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity (Duke University Press, 2021), Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fasci...
Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus, "Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel" (LSU Press, 2020)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent period of U.S. race relations, the African American novel provided a powerful counternarra...
Teresa Irene Gonzales, "Building a Better Chicago: Race and Community Resistance to Urban Redevelopment" (NYU Press, 2021)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite promises from politicians, nonprofits, and government agencies, Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods remain plagued by poverty, failing ...
Lettie Gay, "Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking" ( U South Carolina Press, 2021)
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Southern Food Historian Rebecca Sharpless discusses a new edition of Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking released in 2021 by University of Sou...
Caseen Gaines, "Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way" (Sourcebooks, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Caseen Gaines' Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Sourcebooks, 2021) is a rollicking, entertaining, and fasc...
Ella L. J. Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, "Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity" (Harvard Business Press, 2021)
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ella L. J. Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Harvard Business Pre...
Barrett Holmes Pitner, "The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America" (Counterpoint, 2021)
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Can new language reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future? The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and...
Pamela Ayo Yetunde on being Black and Buddhist
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be black and Buddhist, and what does that have to do with Life Wisdom? This episode of Life Wisdom features the dynamic work of ...
LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, "Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics (U Chicago Press, 2020), LaFleur Stephens-Dougan argues that we focus on the use...
Carol Anderson, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second Amend...
Michael Twitty, "Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook" (UNC Press, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rice is a central ingredient to Southern foodways, and it is one of the most versatile grains served around the world. It could be prepared as a side ...
Adam Henig, "Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman" (McFarland, 2021)
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night-Watchman (McFarland & Co., 2021), Adam Henig sheds new light on a widely forgotten ...
Kevin McGruder, "Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem" (Columbia UP, 2021)
13 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What was Harlem before its Renaissance, and how did it come to be? In Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia University Press, 2021), h...
Richard Alba, "The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream" (Princeton UP, 2020)
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has written an intriguing new book on our unde...
Alison Rose Jefferson, "Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era (Nebraska, 2020) is about the places where the past and future me...
Mark A. Johnson, "Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. ...
Ben Railton, "Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Railton's book Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) is a cogently written history of the i...
Kevin McGruder, "Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem" (Columbia UP, 2021)
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Kevin McGruder about his new book Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia UP, 2021) In a moment of hope, even faith, ...
Christopher J. Lee, "Kwame Anthony Appiah" (Routledge, 2021)
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kwame Anthony Appiah is among the most respected philosophers and thinkers of his generation. In Kwame Anthony Appiah (Routledge, 2021), Christophe...
Anthony Q. Hazard, "Boasians at War: Anthropology, Race, and World War II" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The realities of race that continue to plague the United States have direct ties to the anthropology. Anthropologists often imagine their discipline a...
Adam Lee Cilli, "Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945" (U Georgia Press, 2021)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an ass...
Jeffery A. Jenkins and Justin Peck, "Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Jenkins and Justin Peck’s new book Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918 (U Chicago Press, 2021) explores how Congressional ...
Andre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner" (U Mississippi Press, 2020)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (U Mississippi Press, 2020) is a history of the career of Bishop He...
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of ...
Philip Butler, "Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited by Dr. Philip Butler, imagines worlds, afrofuture...
Theodore W. Cohen, "Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Theodore Cohen examines the ways in which different ...
Kevin Waite, "West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire" (UNC Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Sout...
Ken Ellingwood, "First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to t...
Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein, "Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring...
Ariana Brown, "We Are Owed." (Grieveland Press, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Ariana Brown searches for new origins in her debut book We Are Owed. (Grieveland Press, 2021). Brown has had over ten years of experience wri...
Sebastian N. Page, "Black Resettlement and the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Based on sweeping research in six languages, Sebastian N. Page's Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2021) offers the first...
Martin Summers, "Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the c...
Erin R. Pineda, "Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement" (Oxford UP, 2021)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are few movements more firmly associated with civil disobedience than the Civil Rights Movement. In the mainstream imagination, civil rights act...
Funké Aladejebi, "Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers" (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In post-World War II Canada, black women’s positions within the teaching profession served as sites of struggle and conflict as the nation worked to...
Elizabeth Hinton, "America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since The 1960s" (Liveright, 2021)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellions since the 1960s (Liveright, 2021) Dr. Elizabeth Hinton asserts the s...
Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs, "The Digital Black Atlantic" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies...
Luiz Valerio de Paula Trindade, "No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media" (Vernon Press, 2020)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media (Vernon Press, 2020) examines the social phenomenon of construction and diss...
Kevin Quashie, "Black Aliveness, Or a Poetics of Being" (Duke UP, 2021)
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being (Duke University Press, 2012), Kevin Quashie imagines a Black world in which one encounters Black being ...
Van Gosse, "The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2021)
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential black electoral politics evolved in the United States before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the ov...
Badia Ahad-legardy, "Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nostalgia has received increasing attention for its role in shaping contemporary social and political life in the United States. Dr. Badia Ahad-Legard...
Timothy D. Walker, "Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than 70 percent of the 103 pre-Emancipation slave narratives acknowledged using waterways as their method for escaping enslavement. However, much...
Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, "Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics" (Ohio State UP, 2020)
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (Ohio State UP, 2020), Sean Guynes and Martin Lund have assembled more than fifteen chap...
Todne Thomas, "Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality" (Duke UP, 2021)
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality (Duke University Press, 2021) by Todne Thomas takes a deep dive into the social and religious liv...
Claudrena N. Harold, "When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel, Whe...
Bob Kuska and Archie Clark, "Shake and Bake: The Life and Times of NBA Great Archie Clark" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Shake and Bake is the story of Archie Clark, one of the top playmaking guards in the 1970s pre-merger NBA. While not one of the game’s most recogni...
Amaka Okechukwu, "To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions" (Columbia UP, 2019)
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014 and 2015, students at dozens of colleges and universities held protests demanding increased representation of Black and Latino students and ca...
Jamila Lyiscott, "Black Appetite. White Food. Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom" (Routledge, 2019)
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One year to the day after George Flloyd’s murder, Dr. Jamila Lyiscott discusses her book on racial justice in education: Black Appetite. White Fo...
Cécile Fromont, "Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition" (Penn State, 2019)
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Dr. Cécile Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (Pe...
Katrinell M. Davis, "Tainted Tap: Flint's Journey from Crisis to Recovery" (UNC Press, 2021)
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years d...
Neil Altman, "White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020)
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Altman’s White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge, 2020) is a slip (80 pages including references and the index) of a book th...
The Social Constructions of Race: A Discussion with Brigitte Fielder
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to br...
Cat M. Ariail, "Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At almost any international sporting event in which the US competes, it is now common (and appropriate) to remark on the composition of the American t...
Democracy and Social Critique with Cornel West
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor at Union Theological Seminary. Professor West is among the nation’s most distinguished philosophers...
Nadia E. Brown and Danielle Casarez Lemi, "Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites" (Oxford UP, 2021)
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
All political candidates make strategic choices about how to present themselves to voters but not all candidates have to “weigh decisions about thei...
Christine Walker, "Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press, 2020) is t...
Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America was published by Basic Books in 2021, and tells a sprawling h...
Kathryn Benjamin Golden, "Armed in the Great Swamp': Fear, Maroon Insurrection, and the Insurgent Ecology of the Great Dismal Swamp" (2021)
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021, we are inundated with daily images of racial terror, state violence, and technologies of punishment showing pictures of broken down, beleague...
Justene Hill Edwards, "Unfree Markets: The Slaves' Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina" (Columbia UP, 2021)
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Justene Hill Edwards is the author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press,...
Matthew Clair, "Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court" (Princeton UP, 2020)
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Princeton UP, 2020) by Matthew Clair is a powerful ethnographic study of the ...
Moya Bailey, "Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance" (NYU Press, 2021)
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Where racism and sexism meet—an understanding of anti-Black misogyny. When Moya Bailey first coined the term misogynoir, she defined it as the ways ...
John Murillo III, "Impossible Stories: On the Space and Time of Black Destructive Creation" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
14 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Impossible Stories: On the Space and Time of Black Destructive Creation (Ohio State UP, 2021), John Murillo offers bold new readings of recent an...
Jordana M. Saggese, "The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader" (U California Press, 2021)
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader (University of California Press, 2021), Jordana Moore Saggese provides the first comprehensive sourcebook on the ...
João José Reis, "Ganhadores: A greve negra de 1857 na Bahia" (Companhia das Letras, 2019)
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Um retrato original da Bahia no século XIX, num livro cheio de movimento e vozes, sobretudo da gente negra. Em Ganhadores: A Greve Negra de 1857 na ...
Kate Dossett, "Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal" (UNC Press, 2020)
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Dossett's book Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal (UNC Press, 2020) turns conventional understandings of the Federal Theatre Project on its...
Alison M. Parker, "Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell" (UNC Press, 2020)
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Alison M. Parker’s new book Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) explores the life o...
David Alan Sklansky, "A Pattern of Violence: How the Law Classifies Crimes and What it Means for Justice" (Harvard UP, 2020)
07 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the George Floyd killing, many Americans are engaging in a renewed debate about the role violence and especially police violence, plays...
Susan M. Reverby, "Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy" (UNC Press, 2013)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some books are new, others are newly relevant – and so worth looking at from a new, contemporary perspective. Such is the case with Susan Reverby’...
Maureen Mahon, "Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll" (Duke UP, 2020)
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Maureen Mahon’s book, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Duke University Press, 2020), focuses on the contributions t...
Karlos K. Hill, "The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the evening of May 31, 1921, thousands of white Oklahomans assaulted the Greenwood District of the city of Tulsa. In what would come to be known as...