New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Sandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Enter...
Charles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015)
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis...
Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018)
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the ...
Avidit Acharya et al., “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics” (Princeton UP, 2018)
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Several weeks ago, we had Professor Lilliana Mason on the podcast talking about her book about the process of social sorting that has deepened divides...
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” (The New Press, 2018)
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A book that strikes at the source of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Ethan J. Kytle and ...
John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) i...
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
16 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, ...
Matthew Karp, “This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at The Helm of American Foreign Policy” (Harvard UP, 2016)
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people know that slavery was foundational to the economic development of the United States in the antebellum period. Fewer people are aware that ...
Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016)
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as pa...
Lisa A. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey” (UNC Press, 2017)
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Lisa A. Lindsay’s book Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa (University of North Carolina Press, 2017),...
Averell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic” (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University ...
Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom” (U Penn Press, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Keisha N. Blain teaches African American and gender and women’s history at the University of Pittsburg. Her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nation...
John Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
25 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the i...
Greg Berman and Julian Adler, “Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (The New Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The United States leads the world in incarceration. That’s a problem, especially the disproportionate impact of “mass incarceration” on low-inco...
Imani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public p...
Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined ...
Koritha Mitchell, ed., “Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted” by Frances E.W. Harper (Broadview Editions, 2018)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s nineteenth-century novel Iola Leroy has not always been considered a core text in the canon of African American liter...
Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel” (Yale UP, 2018)
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The black social gospel–formulated and given voice by abolitionists and post-reconstruction Black men and women–took the United States by storm in...
Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade” (UNC Press, 2017)
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett shows ...
Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018)
04 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018...
Julian Lim, “Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017)
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With the railroad’s arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region ...
J. Michael Butler, “Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida 1960-1980” (UNC Press, 2016)
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have long debated when the Black Freedom Struggle began and when it ended. Most point to the King years, 1955-1968. In his excellent book B...
Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017)
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. D...
Matthew Clavin, “Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers” (Harvard UP, 2015)
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that most runaway African-American slaves fled north in pursuit of freedom. Most, but not all. Some also fled to Pensacola, a city located...
Kali Nicole Gross, “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso” (Oxford UP, 2016)
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
True crime is as popular as ever in our present moment. Both television and podcast series have gained critical praise and large audiences by explorin...
Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The ...
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974” (Michigan State UP, 2017).
16 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, ...
Douglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of late-night basketball gained prominence in the late 1980s when G. Van Standifer founded Midnight Basketball League as a vehicle upon wh...
Paul Ortiz, “An African American and Latinx History of the United States” (Beacon Press, 2017)
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout many American classrooms, students learn how the United States was formed, and most importantly, the historical figures who helped produce ...
Sridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age” (HMH, 2017)
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Sridhar Pappu, author of the book The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age (Hou...
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, “Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War” (UNC Press, 2016)
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the d...
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi” (U of Georgia Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agri...
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North...
Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam” (UNC Press, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Nation of Islam and other black nationalist groups are typically known for their male leaders. Men like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister...
Elizabeth McRae, “Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy” (Oxford UP, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Much attention has been drawn to the role of white women in the recent Alabama senate election and the earlier election of Donald J. Trump as presiden...
Kay Wright Lewis, “A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World” (U. Georgia Press, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Howa...
Corey D. Fields, “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans” (UC Press, 2016)
24 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is it about Black Republicans that makes them fodder for comedy? How do Black Republicans view their participation in their political group? Core...
Ashley D. Farmer, “Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era” (UNC Press, 2017)
21 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Black Power was one of the most iconic movements of the twentieth century. Recent documentary treatments like The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 in 201...
Patrick Breen, “The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt” (Oxford UP, 2015)
14 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did African-American slaves react to slavery? What factors, particularly religion, might shape those reactions, even making them violent? Patrick ...
Sowande Mustakeem, “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage” (U. Illinois Press, 2016)
14 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most scholars and members of the public believe the process of enslavement was confined to the Western Hemispheric plantation or other locations of en...
Nikki M. Taylor, “Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio” (Ohio U. Press, 2016)
05 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
You may know Toni Morrison’s famed novel Beloved, but do you know much about the true story of the woman depicted in that story? You will know about...
Stephane Robolin, “Grounds of Engagement: Apartheid-Era African American and South African Writing” (U. Illinois Press, 2015)
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Writers have long created networks and connections by exchanging letters or writing back to one another in their poetry and fiction. Letters between E...
Michelle Kuo, “Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship” (Random House, 2017)
26 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don’t look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students dev...
Melissa Milewski, “Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to the Civil Rights Era” (Oxford UP, 2017)
24 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on materials from archives in eight southern US states, Melissa Milewski’s Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and W...
David Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017)
11 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by David A. Goldstein, author of the book Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land (Skyhorse Publishing, 2...
Martha J. Cutter, “The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narratives, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1853” (U. Georgia Press, 2017)
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery as a system of torture and bondage has fascinated the optical imagination of the transatlantic world for centuries. Scholars have examined var...
James Forman Jr., “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017)
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017...
Lisa M. Corrigan, “Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016)
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics an...
Steve Sheinkin, “The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights” (Roaring Brook, 2014)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks...
Vincent J. Intondi, “African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement” (Stanford UP, 2015)
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015)...
Anne C. Bailey, “The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary conversations and debates over Confederate monuments underline how memory-making and the legacies of U.S. slavery and the Civil War remai...
Sarah Haley, “No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity” (UNC Press, 2016)
15 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Recent popular and scholarly interest has highlighted the complex and brutal system of mass incarceration in the United States. Much of this interest ...
Ben H. Winters, “Underground Airlines” (Mulholland Books, 2016)
13 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Underground Airlines (Mulholland Books, 2016) is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like...
Keri Leigh Merritt, “Masterless Men: Poor Whites in the Antebellum South” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men: Poor Whites in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017) reveals what h...
Beverly Jenkins, “Chasing Down a Dream: A Blessings Novel” (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Blessings Series continue with a heartwarming novel, Chasing Down a Dream (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017), about what makes a family when trials...
Joanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora” (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine D...
Johari Jabir, “Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War’s ‘Gospel Army'” (Ohio State UP, 2017)
29 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is the labor for Black soldiers of the regiment? That is the question Johari Jabir asks in his book Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in t...
Juilet Hooker, “Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos” (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere – the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist le...
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars (SUNY Press, 2015)
26 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitiv...
Mitch Kachun, “First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory” (Oxford UP, 2017)
23 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores how Crispus Attucks’ death in the 1770 Boston M...
Marcia Walker-McWilliams, “Reverend Addie: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (U. Illinois Press, 2016)
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Addie Wyatt stands at the intersection of unionism, feminism, and civil rights activism in post-World War II America. In Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith a...
Tanya Ann Kennedy, “Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture” (SUNY Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tanya Ann Kennedy‘s book, Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture (SUNY Press, 2017), is a complex an...
Rosalind Rosenberg, “Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray” (Oxford UP, 2017)
06 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray,...
Tommy J. Curry, “The Man-Not: Race, Class, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood” (Temple UP, 2017)
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning f...
Ira Dworkin, “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State” (UNC Press, 2017)
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his 1903 hit “Congo Love Song,” James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song’...
Patricia Spears Jones, “A Lucent Fire: New and Collected Poems” (White Pines Press, 2015)
19 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jackson Poetry Prize Winner Speaks Patricia Spears Jones has been writing poetry since she was twenty and then she was “good.” Today, the prolifi...
Leigh Fought, “Women in the World of Frederick Douglass” (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 201...
Max Krochmal, “Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era” (UNC, 2016)
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is about the “other”...
Marlene Banks, “Ruth’s Redemption” (Lift Every Voice, 2012)
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s A Love Story. Set in the 1800s, Ruth’s Redemption (Lift Every Voice, 2012), is an unusual depiction of the lives of slaves and free blacks i...
Brittney C. Cooper, “Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women” (U. Illinois Press, 2017)
26 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Brittney C. Cooper, who is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, explores the intellectual genealogy and g...
Jeanine Michna-Bales, “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017)
23 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When the Sun comes back And the first quail calls Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom If you fol...
Michelle D. Commander, “Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic” (Duke UP, 2017)
20 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle D. Commander examines the (im)possibility...
Kathy Wilson Florence, “Jaybird’s Song” (Kathy Wilson Florence, 2017)
20 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Josie Flint, known as Jaybird, narrates her story of life in Atlanta during the turbulent South as Jim Crow laws come to an end. Her school desegregat...
Michael W. Twitty, “The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South” (Amistad, 2017)
19 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The “ownership” of Southern food is a divisive cultural issue, reflective of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in America. Michael Twitty sh...
Tom Adam Davies, “Mainstreaming Black Power” (U. Cal Press, 2017)
14 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is Black Power? Does it still exist in the so-called post-racial 21st Century? How does Black Power relate to similar movements, like Black Lives...
Shelvy Haywood Keglar, “Underdog to Top Dog: An Improbable Rise” (IBJ, 2017)
14 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most psychology books are written by experts with knowledge deriving from professional experience–for which we are grateful. Occasionally, a psychol...
John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016)
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo S...
Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch, “Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family” (Columbia UP, 2017)
02 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Fa...
Paul Youngquist, “A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism” (U. Texas Press, 2016)
27 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form ...
Christopher Mele, “Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City” (NYU Press, 2017)
27 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Urban sociologists typically use a few grand narratives to explain the path of the American city through the twentieth century and into the twenty-fir...
Britt Rusert, “Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture” (NYU Press, 2017)
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early Afric...
Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility” (Fordham UP, 2016)
19 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Cr...
Melissa L. Cooper, “Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination” (UNC Press, 2017)
19 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history ...
Stanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore” (U. Texas Press, 2017)
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history,...
Sarah Bracey White, “Primary Lessons: A Memoir” (CavanKerry Press, 2013)
29 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As an African-American child growing up in the segregated pre-Civil Rights South, Sarah Bracey White pushed against the social conventions that warned...
Stafanie Deluca, et.al. “Coming of Age in the Other America” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016)
26 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Do you think that what poor people most need to escape poverty is grit? Join us as we speak with Stefanie Deluca, co-author, along with Susan Clampet-...
Samuele F.S. Pardini, “In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen” (Dartmouth, 2017)
26 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen (Dartmouth, 2017) emphas...
James A. Cosby, “Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll” (McFarland, 2016)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched Am...
Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, “Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico” (Duke UP, 2015)
12 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Puerto Rico is often depicted as a “racial democracy” in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing R...
Marlene Banks, “Son of A Preacher Man” and “Greenwood and Archer” (Lift Every Voice, 2012)
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The tragic Tulsa Race Riots plus a smidgeon of romance equals to a compelling historical saga. Marlene Banks weaves fact and fiction together illustra...
Daina Ramey Berry, “The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation” (Beacon Press, 2017)
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Buildin...
Race and Democratic Virtue with Paul C. Taylor
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As US politics becomes increasingly driven by divisions, we need some way of sustaining a shared civic life. Paul Taylor makes the case for democratic...
Ruth Beckford and Careth Reid, “The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph” (Arcadia, 2017)
30 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsbu...
Mia Mask, “Divas on the Screen: Black Women in American Film” (U. of Illinois Press, 2009)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Five charismatic women navigate uneven terrain of racial gender and class stereotypes: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey a...
Steve Aldous, “The World of Shaft: A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films and Television Series” (McFarland, 2015)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Who’s the black private dick That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) Ya damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck For his bro...
Quincy T. Mills, “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America” (UPenn Press, 2013)
25 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Business. Community. Politics. That’s the making of a barbershop. In Cutting Along the Color Lines: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (Unive...
James McGrath Morris, “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press” (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017)
22 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his acclaimed biography Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017), James McGrath Morris ...
Patrick Phillips, “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America” (W.W. Norton, 2016)
13 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of New Books in African American Studies covers Patrick Phillips’ powerful new book Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (W...
Tyina Steptoe, “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” (U. California Press, 2015)
09 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What do you know about Houston, Texas? That Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States? That Houston was the home of the 2016 NCAA Final ...
Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
03 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappoi...