New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Philip Kadish, "The Great White Hoax: Frauds, Forgeries, and 200 Years of Selling Racism in America"
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fake news, outright political lies, a shamelessly partisan press, and the collapse of truth, civility, and shared facts, Dr. Philip Kadish argues, are...
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings" (Harper, 2025)
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfict...
Rob Edwards, "Defiant: The Story of Robert Smalls" (Stranger Comics, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the height of the Civil War, on May 12, 1862, Robert Smalls—an enslaved harbor pilot in Charleston, South Carolina—carried out one of the most ...
Robell Awake, "A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and ...
Alexandria Russell, "Black Women Legacies: Public History Sites Seen and Unseen" (University of Illinois Press, 2024)
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Black clubwomen to members of preservation organizations, African American women have made commemoration a central part of Black life and culture...
Rob Franklin, "Great Black Hope" (Summit Books, 2025)
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope (Summit Books, 2025) Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction, criticism, and poetry, and a c...
Brando Simeo Starkey, "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System" (Doubleday, 2025)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) takes readers...
Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America" (NYU Press, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to ...
Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being a...
Karida L. Brown, "The Battle for the Black Mind" (Legacy Lit, 2025)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A gripping chronicle of the relentless fight for Black educational freedom--and the bold strategies to protect, nourish, and empower Black minds. The...
Frank X Walker, "Load in Nine Times: Poems" (Liveright, 2024)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reim...
Rasheedah Phillips, "Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time" (AK Press, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some processes—like aging, birth, and car crashes—occur in only one direction in time, when by the fundamental symmetry of the universe, we...
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Powe...
James B. Haile III, "The Dark Delight of Being Strange: Black Stories of Freedom" (Columbia UP, 2024)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An ambitious genre-crossing exploration of Black speculative imagination, The Dark Delight of Being Strange: Black Stories of Freedom (Columbia Univ...
Ariel Nereson, "Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, renowned choreographer and director Bill T. Jones developed three tributes: Serenade/The Proposi...
William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the Universi...
Seulghee Lee, "Other Lovings: An Afroasian American Theory of Life" (Ohio State UP, 2025)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join me for a conversation with Dr. Seulghee Lee (Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, University of South Carolina) about ...
John Lee Hooker Jr., "From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) is powerful memoir of redemption from the so...
Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024)
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in ...
Vanessa Priya Daniel, "Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning" (Random House, 2025)
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the U.S., many of the most significant social justice victories of our time have been spearheaded by women of color leaders. From the streets, to t...
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering...
Frederick Knight, "Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her reno...
Ben Arogundade, "Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Recognition in a White Hollywood" (Cassell, 2025)
26 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On February 29, 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The...
Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The history of queer politics in the United States since 1968 is commonly narrated as either a progressive campaign for state recognition or as a subc...
Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But w...
Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year ...
Alfred L. Martin, Jr., "Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences" (NYU Press, 2025)
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) brea...
Aaron Kupchik, "Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice" (NYU Press, 2025)
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve th...
Maurice Jackson, "Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflic...
Daryl Fairweather, "Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
13 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? ...
Davida Siwisa James, "Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries" (Fordham UP, 2024)
12 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspo...
Forest Issac Jones, "Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972" (First Hill Books, 2025)
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Forest Isaac Jones is an award-winning author of non-fiction and essays, specializing in the study of Irish History, the US Civil Rights Movement and ...
Martha S. Jones, "The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir" (Basic Books, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’...
Julie Malnig, "Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s" (Oxford UP, 2023)
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a new look ...
Atiya Husain, "No God But Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism" (Duke UP, 2025)
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Atiya Husain’s No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge and Terrorism (Duke University Press, 2025) uses the FBI Most Wanted lists to rethink theoretica...
Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these ...
Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the centra...
Jason Cannon, "A Time for Reflection: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovery and Billy Williams" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities ...
Tracie Canada, "Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football" (U California Press, 2025)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different...
Victoria Christopher Murray, "Harlem Rhapsody" (Berkley, 2025)
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most people in North America have probably at least heard the name W. E. B. Dubois. In the early twentieth century, DuBois—the first African-America...
"Micaiah Carter: What's My Name" (Prestel, 2023)
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decade Micaiah Carter has established himself as one of the most exciting and admired young photographers working in the field of portra...
Douglas Field, "Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I" (Manchester UP, 2024)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwi...
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit...
Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall, "Ain't I an Anthropologist: Zora Neale Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's li...
"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing he...
Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most US history textbooks contain a familiar map: shaded colors stretch across North America, clearly and neatly demarcating the extent of US expansi...
Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michigan's African Americans played critical roles in winning the Civil War and setting millions of fellow Americans forever free. The 1st Michigan Co...
Alexander Smalls and Nina Oduro, "The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa" (Phaidon Press, 2024)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa (Phaidon Press, 2024) is an elegant collection of 120 home co...
Mike Sielski, "Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk...
Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery (UNC Press, 2024) is a dramatic transatlantic story about five women who birthe...
William M. Paris, "Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation" (Oxford UP, 2024)
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How does time figure in racial domination? What is the relationship between the capitalist organization of time and racial domination? Could utopian t...
Stephanie M. Pridgeon, "Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas (U Toronto Press, 2025), Stephanie M. Pri...
Trump, Anti-DEI and Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode my co-host and I had planned to talk about how the new Trump administration could create unity in America. The episode title had been,...
The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunning...
Mary Frances Phillips, "Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins" (NYU Press, 2025)
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party membe...
The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our book is: The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) by award-winning historian ...
Tao Leigh Goffe, "Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis" (Doubleday Books, 2025)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of...
Samantha Ege, "South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene by Samantha Ege (University of Illinois Press, 2014) is a collec...
Anthony E. Kaye, "Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History" (FSG, 2024)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which...
Gloria Blizzard, "Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas" (Dundurn Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas (Dundurn Press, 2025) by Gloria Blizzard is a diasporic collection of essays on music, memory, and motion...
Derek W. Black, "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy" (Yale UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was ...
Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), Robin Bernstein tells the story of a...
Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, "America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the first book-length study of auctions in early America, America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values (U Pennsylvania P...
Leonne M. Hudson, "Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (Southern Illinois UP, 2024)
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth carried out the first presidential assassination in United States history. The euphoria resulting from General Le...
The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Henry Christophe was born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and fought to overthrow the British in North America before helpin...
Casey Golomski, "God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room: Racial ...
Anthony Walton, "The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation" (David R. Godine, 2024)
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw system...
Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, "Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture (Rutgers UP, 2024), Beretta E. Smith-Shomade contends that Black ...
Andrew Gomez, "Constructing Cuban America: Race and Identity in Florida's Caribbean South, 1868–1945" (U Texas Press, 2024)
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How Black and white Cubans navigated issues of race, politics, and identity during the post-Civil War and early Jim Crow eras in South Florida. On Jul...
Nora Gross, "Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A heartbreaking account of grief, Black boyhood, and how we can support young people as they navigate loss. JahSun, a dependable, much-loved senior at...
Simon Hall, "Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s" (Faber and Faber, 2020)
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s (Faber, 2020), Simon Hall, a Professor of Modern History at the Univer...
Jennie Lightweis-Goff, "Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cities are fraught sites in the national imagination, turned into identity markers when “urban” and “rural” indicate tastes rather than places...
Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)
04 Jan 2025
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...
I. Augustus Durham, "Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius" (Duke UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius (Duke UP, 2023), I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and me...
Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2021)
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Photography emerged in the 1840s in the United States, and it became a visual medium that documents the harsh realities of enslavement. Similarly, the...
In Conversation: The Antinomies of Afropessimism
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, S. Sayyid talks with Barnor Hesse (Northwestern University) on the Antimonies of Afropessimism. Professor Barnor Hesse teaches in the...
Kent Michael Shaw, "Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary" (Pickwick, 2024)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary (Pickwick, 2024), Kent Michael Shaw I examines...
Donna Tesiero, "A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North" (McFarland, 2024)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the American Revolution, Elizabeth Freeman was an enslaved widow and mother living in Massachusetts. Hearing the words of the new Massac...
James Baldwin’s Use of Mechanisms of Defense in this Story “Going to Meet the Man”
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” is a powerful short story that describes the life of Jesse, a 42-year-old white police officer whose exp...
Randy M. Browne, "The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the driver is the story of Atlantic slavery. Starting in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, enslavers developed the driving system to sol...
Crystal R. Sanders, "A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs" (UNC Press, 2024)
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (UNC Press, 2024) tells the little-known story ...
Susanna Ashton, "A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin" (New Press, 2024)
29 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a fugitive slave in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stay...
In Conversation: Enslaved Muslims in the Americas
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Dr. Sylviane Diouf on enslaved Muslim in the Americas. Diouf is the author of Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons...
Jennifer C. Nash, "How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory" (Duke UP, 2024)
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer C. Nash examines how Black feminists use beautiful writing to allow...
Jess A. Goldberg, "Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can Black Atlantic literature challenge conventions and redefine literary scholarship? Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice (U Min...
Vincent Haddad, "The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023" (Lever Press, 2024)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the pos...
Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the time of the opening of the Atlantic world in the fifteenth century, Europeans and Atlantic Africans had developed significantly different cultu...
Tom Jenks, "James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues" (Oxford UP, 2024)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues (Oxford University Press, 2024), Tom Jenks follows a scene-by-scene, sometimes line-by-line, discussion of the patt...
Brian Martin, "From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War" (ECW Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the ...
Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The processes of secularization and desegregation were among the two most radical transformations of the American public school system in all its hist...
Ana Lucia Araujo, "Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane ...
Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called ...
Deondra Rose, "The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United State...
Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial an...
Too Black and Rasul A. Mowatt, "Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits" (Routledge, 2024)
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (Routledge, 2024) examines the dilution and commodification of Blac...
Mary Ellen Curtin, "She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During her keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Party convention, Barbara Jordan of Texas stood before a rapt audience and reflected on where America...
Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate w...
W. Paul Reeve, et al., "This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah" (Oxford UP, 2024)
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On July 22, 1847, a group of about forty refugees entered the Salt Lake Valley. Among them were three enslaved men, two of whom shared the religion, M...
Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik ...