New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Vorris Nunley, “Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric” (Wayne State UP, 2011)
16 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Vorris Nunley‘s Keepin it Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Wayne State University Press, 2011), uses the black barb...
Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010)
17 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis,” acknowledged Jackie Robinson, “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten ...
Keith Gilyard, “True to the Language Game: African American Discourse, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy” (Routledge, 2011)
22 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In the preface to this book, Keith Gilyard describes his career as 30 years of roaming the areas of rhetoric, composition, sociolinguistics, creative ...
Jerald Walker, “Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption” (Bantam Books, 2010)
17 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Jerald Walker‘s critical autobiography, Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption (Bantam, 2010), is a sheer pleasure to read. A b...
Kitty Kelley, “Oprah: A Biography” (Three Rivers Press, 2011)
15 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When she emerged triumphant in a legal battle with the Texas beef industry, Oprah Winfrey took to the steps of the Amarillo court house and declared: ...
Daniel Sharfstein, “The Invisible line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White” (Penguin, 2011)
01 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Sharfstein‘s The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2011) is the latest and p...
Lester K. Spence, “Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
25 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Hip-hop has, within a short time span, moved from a free-flowing expression of urban youth to a global–and highly marketable–musical genre. Its in...
Pierre W. Orelus, “The Agony of Masculinity: Race, Gender, and Education in the Age of the ‘New’ Racism and Patriarchy” (Peter Lang, 2010)
17 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Agony of Masculinity: Race, Gender, and Education in the Age of the “New” Racism and Patriarchy (Peter Lang, 2010), Pierre Or...
Dave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World” (Haymarket Books, 2011)
04 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
There are beautiful sports photos, and dramatic sports photos. There are sports photos that are funny, and others that are poignant. There are photos ...
Ron Christie, “Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010)
26 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In his new bookActing White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), former White House aide Ron Christie recounts the histor...
Scott Brooks, “Black Men Can’t Shoot” (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
19 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
With the NBA in the midst of a labor disagreement, players from the world’s premier basketball league are scattering in different directions to main...
Charles McKinney, Jr., “Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina” (UPA, 2010)
16 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When I was an undergraduate, I noticed that there were certain books that seemed to be unavoidable (at least at my liberal arts college). They were as...
James Unnever and Shaun L. Gabbidon, “A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime” (Routledge, 2011)
15 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Is comedian and cultural critic Bill Cosby right–that black youth suffer from a cultural pathology that leads them to commit more crimes than their ...
Miriam Thaggert, “Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)
31 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Thaggert’s study Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)...
Daniel Black, “Perfect Peace” (St. Martin’s Press, 2010)
24 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
If a mother raises her biologically male child as a daughter instead of a son, what would be the effects on the family, the community, the church? Ind...
Robert Thurston, “Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective” (Ashgate, 2011)
05 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
It takes a brave historian to take on the orthodoxy regarding the rise and fall of lynching in the United States. That orthodoxy holds that lynching i...
Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era” (Columbia UP, 2008)
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Ba...
Frank Dobson, Jr., “Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks and Whites, Love and Death” (Plain View Press, 2010)
21 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Dobson, Jr.‘s Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks and Whites, Love and Death (Plain View Press, 2010) is a single-authored collection of fi...
Deborah Whaley, “Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities” (SUNY, 2010)
15 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Deborah Whaley’s new book Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (SUNY Press,...
Nikky Finney, “Head Off and Split: Poems” (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2010)
06 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
UPDATE: Nikky Finney’s Head Off and Split has been named a finalist for a National Book Award. Congratulations, Nikky, from the folks at New Boo...
Harvey Young, “Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body” (University of Michigan, 2010)
20 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
With the election of Barack Obama, the first U.S. president of African descent, many people believed that America had ushered in an era of post-racial...
Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
15 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music ...
Kwasi Konadu, “The Akan Diaspora in the Americas” (Oxford UP, 2010)
09 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
How can those in African, Africana, and African American Studies strengthen their disciplinary ties? What do these connections have to do with Kwasi K...
Elizabeth Abel, “Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow” (University of California Press, 2010)
07 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I think this is really interesting. Among the thousands of iconic and easily recognizable photographs of segregated water fountains in the American So...
Alan Nadel, “August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle” (University of Iowa Press, 2010)
30 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Many scholars consider August Wilson to be the premier American playwright of the 20th Century. Alan Nadel is surely one of their number. In the early...
Blair Ruble, “Washington’s U Street: A Biography” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010)
18 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I used to live in Washington DC, not far from a place I learned to call the “U Street Corridor.” I really had no idea why it was a “corridor” ...
Chad L. Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
13 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians...
Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease” (Beacon Press, 2010)
04 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are t...
Charles Lane, “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction” (Henry Holt, 2008)
11 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Reconstruction fail? Why didn’t the post-war Federal government protect the civil rights of the newly freed slaves? And why did it take Wash...
Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” (Norton, 2010)
14 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
We in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or what we casually call “race.” But, as Nell Irvin Painter shows in her fascin...
Kyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces” (Black Threads Press, 2009)
19 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“...
Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010)
12 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But n...
Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II” (Oxford UP, 2010)
23 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known t...
Amy Bass, “Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W. E. B. Du Bois” (Minnesota UP, 2009)
15 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I asked my wife if she knew who W. E. B. Du Bois was. She did, as would most Americans. I then asked her if she knew where Du Bois was born and raised...
Jack Greene and Philip Morgan, “Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal” (Oxford UP, 2008)
02 Oct 2009
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is offering in conjunction with the National History Center. The NHC and Oxford Un...
Leslie Schwalm, “Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest” (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)
31 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War. But have you heard of “Northern Reconstruction?” Pro...
Matt Wasniewski, et al., “Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007” (U.S. House of Representatives, 2008)
15 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
In just a few days, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. And though it’s a momentous day f...
Colin Grant, “Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey” (Oxford UP, 2008)
13 Jun 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare breed of writer who is also an excellent historian. Or is that “rare breed of...
Colin Gordon, “Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
09 May 2008
Contributed by Lukas
This week we have Professor Colin Gordon of the University of Iowa on the show talking about his new book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of t...
Eric Gardner, “Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West” (University Press of Mississippi, 2008)
09 Apr 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. The interview focuses on Jennie Carter: A...
Kevin Mumford, “Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America” (New York UP, 2007)
15 Feb 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Today we feature an interview with Kevin Mumford about his new book Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America (New York University Press,...