New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Christopher Tounsel, "Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Tounsel's book Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the history of ...
Courtney Thorsson, "The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture" (Columbia UP, 2023)
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture (Columbia University Press, 2023) explores how an incredible group of B...
Kevin Woodson, "The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
America's elite law firms, investment banks, and management consulting firms are known for grueling hours, low odds of promotion, and personnel practi...
Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, "The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education" (SUNY Press, 2023)
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2023) elevates the oral histories of 105 accomplished, college-educated Bla...
Kendra Y. Hamilton, "Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Kendra Y. Hamilton’s Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess (University of Georgia Press, 2024) is a literary and cultural history ...
Robert K. D. Colby, "An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South" (Oxford UP, 2024)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died ...
Luis H. H. Favela, "The Ecological Brain: Unifying the Sciences of Brain, Body, and Environment" (Routledge, 2024)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ecological psychology holds that perception and action are best explained in terms of dynamic interactions between brain, body, and environment, not i...
Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha, "Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States" (UNC Press, 2023)
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals...
James Wolfinger, "If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress: Black Politics in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia" (Temple UP, 2022)
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress: Black Politics in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia (Temple UP, 2022) provides an in-depth historical ana...
Crystal Wilkinson, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks" (Clarkson Potter, 2023)
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized t...
Adia Harvey Wingfield, "Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It" (Amistad Press, 2023)
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to a...
Christopher Cameron, "Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism" (Northwestern UP, 2019)
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019) by Christopher Cameron, an Associate Professor of h...
John H. Cable, "Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
28 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Historians of the American South have come to consider the mechanization and consolidation of cotton farming—the “Southern enclosure movement”—...
Adam J. Criblez, "Kings of the Garden: The New York Knicks and Their City" (Three Hills, 2024)
26 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Kings of the Garden: The New York Knicks and Their City (Three Hills, 2024), Adam J. Criblez traces the fall and rise of the New York Knicks betw...
Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King, "America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is happening to the politics of race in America? In America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair (U Chicago Press, 2024), Roger...
Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increase...
Tanisha Ford, "Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement" (Amistad Press, 2024)
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An engrossing social history of the unsinkable Mollie Moon, the stylish founder of the National Urban League Guild and fundraiser extraordinaire who r...
Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist Melvin L. Rogers has a deep and rich new book delving into the work of a host of different African American political thinkers. But...
Joseph H. Holland, "Make Your Own History: Timeless Truths from Black American Trailblazers" (Dafina, 2023)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred and twenty Black leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs share their wisdom and experience across the centuries in Make Your Own History: ...
Jeremy Black, "The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History" (Routledge, 2015)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History (Routledge, 2015), Jeremy Black presents a compact yet comprehensive survey of slavery and its impact o...
R. J. Boutelle, "The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny" (UNC Press, 2023)
13 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As Manifest Destiny took hold in the national consciousness, what did it mean for African Americans who were excluded from its ambitions for an expand...
JJ Johnson and Danica Novgorodoff, "The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes from Around the World for the Heart of Your Table" (Flatiron Books, 2023)
13 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes from Around the World for the Heart of Your Table (Flatiron Books, 2023) is a cookbook celebrating the versatility of...
Elyse Ambrose, "A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive" (T&T Clark, 2024)
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (T&T Clark, 2024), Elyse Ambrose looks to an archive of blackqueerness a...
Shardé M. Davis, "Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling about Racism in Higher Education" (UNC Press, 2024)
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Sharde M. Davis turned to social media during the summer of racial reckoning in 2020, she meant only to share how racism against Black people aff...
Christopher Michael Blakley, "Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World" (Louisiana State UP, 2023)
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex ...
Greg Jarrell, "Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods" (Fortress Press, 2024)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Jarrell's book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods (Fortress Press, 2024) uncovers how race, geography, po...
David J. Dennis Jr. and David J. Dennis Sr., "The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride" (Harper, 2022)
30 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space to which I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally ...
Françoise N. Hamlin and Charles W. McKinney, "From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle" (Vanderbilt UP, 2024)
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Broadly speaking, the traditionally conceptualized mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement and the newer #BlackLivesMatter Movement possess some s...
Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen, "The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2024)
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles...
Tonia Sutherland, "Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife" (U California Press, 2023)
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first critical examination of death and remembrance in the digital age—and an invitation to imagine Black digital sovereignty in life and death....
Coretta M. Pittman, "Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Coretta M. Pittman (Unive...
Whitney Nell Stewart, "This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations" (UNC Press, 2023)
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The cultural memory of plantations in the Old South has long been clouded by myth. A recent reckoning with the centrality of slavery to the US nationa...
Jonathan W. White, "Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), historian Jonat...
Myisha Cherry, "Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From religion to popular culture, institutions and people have shaped how we conceive forgiveness. Myisha Cherry, associate professor of philosophy, a...
Victoria Perry, "A Bittersweet Heritage: Slavery, Architecture and the British Landscape" (Hurst, 2022)
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The 2020 toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston's statue by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol was a dramatic reminder of Britain's role in tra...
Korey Garibaldi, "Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023)
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2023), Korey Garibaldi explores i...
Thomas Mareite, "Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the U.S. South to Mexico's Northeast, 1803-1861" (Brill, 2024)
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
While the literature on slave flight in nineteenth-century North America has commonly focused on fugitive slaves escaping to the U.S. North and Canada...
Surya Parekh, "Black Enlightenment" (Duke UP, 2023)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Enlightenment (Duke UP, 2023), Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works...
Judith Tick, "Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song" (Norton, 2023)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) was one of America’s greatest musicians. In this major biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer who Trans...
Sharon D. Wright Austin, "Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors" (Temple UP, 2023)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors (Temple UP, 2023) explores black women's experiences as mayors in Am...
Rachel Jamison Webster, "Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family" (Henry Holt, 2023)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer...
Sean M. Kelley, "American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865" (Yale UP, 2023)
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and marin...
Ilyon Woo, "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ilyon Woo's Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Simon and Schuster, 2023) tells the remarkable true story of Ellen a...
Carmen Fracchia, "'Black But Human': Slavery and Visual Arts in Hapsburg Spain, 1480-1700" (Oxford UP, 2019)
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Carmen Fracchia's book Black But Human': Slavery and Visual Arts in Hapsburg Spain, 1480-1700 (Oxford UP, 2019) is the first study to focus on the ...
Edda Fields-Black, "Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground R...
Amy Coddington, "How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race" (U California Press, 2023)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race (U California Press, 2023) examines the programming practices at commercial radio stations in the 1...
Derron Wallace, "The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth" (Oxford UP, 2023)
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does race matter in schools? In The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth (Oxford UP, 2023), Derron Wallace, ...
Horace J. Maxile, Jr. and Kristen M. Turner, "Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's Guide" (Routledge, 2022)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors incl...
Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, phot...
Imani D. Owens, "Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers...
Laurence Ralph, "Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him" (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He wa...
Norman Hill and Velma Murphy Hill, "Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain: The Extraordinary Story of Love, Civil Rights, and Labor Activism" (Regalo Press, 2023)
17 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The remarkable story of a couple who came together during the civil rights movement and made fighting for equality and civil and workers' rights their...
Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this New Books Network/Gotham Center for NYC History podcast, guest host Beth Harpaz, editor of the City University of New York website SUM, interv...
Brian H. Williams, "The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)
10 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all: gunshot wounds, stabbings, and traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Comin...
Jennifer Sdunzik, "The Geography of Hate: The Great Migration through Small-Town America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the Great Migration, Black Americans sought new lives in midwestern small towns only to confront the pervasive efforts of white residents deter...
Bryce Henson, "Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil" (U Texas Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Known as Black Rome, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, is a predominantly Black city. The local art, food, and dance are closely linked to the population's A...
Steven High, "Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neigh...
Calvin John Smiley, "Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition" (U California Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), Calvin John Smiley explores the lives of people who w...
Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer, "Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery...
Murray Forman and Mark V. Campbell, "Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production" (Intellect, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the vast popularity and cultural influence of hip-hop, efforts to archive its history are still in fairly early stages. Hip-Hop Archives: The...
George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial M...
Marc Arsell Robinson, "Washington State Rising: Black Power on Campus in the Pacific Northwest" (NYU Press, 2023)
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1960s, as the United States was wracked by protests, assassinations, and political unrest, students in Washington State seized the moment...
Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education (Broadleaf Books, 2024), by Dr. Jasmine L. ...
The Culture Trap, with Sociologist Derron Wallace (EF, JP)
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Elizabeth and John talk with Derron Wallace, sociologist of education and Brandeis colleague, about his new book The Culture Trap, ...
Maryam Kashani, "Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival" (Duke UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Black Power movement and state surveillance to Silicon Valley and gentrification, Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival (D...
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...
Colorblindness and the Classics: A Conversation with Andre Archie
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why has Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a color-blind society suffered so many recent setbacks? Classical philosopher Andre Archie argues that we n...
Damien Sojoyner, "Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice" (Fordham UP, 2023)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice (Fordham UP, 2023) is a meditation upon what author Damien M. Sojoyner calls the “...
Ethel Morgan Smith, "Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s, and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr...
Nicholas Radburn, "Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2023)
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the eighteenth century, Britain’s slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by t...
Kareem R. Muhammad, "The Fight for Black Empowerment in the USA: America’s Last Hope" (Routledge, 2023)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Kareem Muhammad has a new book that focuses on the role of Black voters in the United States – specifically in their power as participants in de...
Cassander L. Smith, "Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic" (LSU Press, 2023)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic (LSU Press, 2023) by Dr. Cassander L. Smith examines the means through which people of African des...
Scott Gac, "Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Gac's Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge UP, 2023) investigates one of history's most violent undertakings: The Unit...
Black and Queer on Campus
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023) by Michael P. Jeffries, which offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ c...
Miles P. Grier, "Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery (University of Virginia Press, 2023), Miles P. Grier argues that...
Kathryn Mathers, "White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation" (Routledge, 2022)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation (Routledge, 2022), Kathryn Mathers interrogates the white...
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on ...
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...
Darnise C. Martin, "Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church" (NYU Press, 2005)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Darnise C. Martin's Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious ...
Patrick R. O'Malley, "The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick R. O'Malley's book The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (U Virginia Press, 2...
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, "Grave History: Death, Race, and Gender in Southern Cemeteries" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle’s edited collection Grave History: Death, Race and Gender in Southern Cemeteries (University of Georgia Press, 2023...
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winneb...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers w...
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and e...
Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson deta...
Ralph H. Craig, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she f...
D. B. Maroon, "Black Lives, American Love: Essays on Race and Resilience" (Lawrence Hill Books, 2023)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this hard-hitting collection of essays, D.B. Maroon presents a personal biography of America, Blackness, and racial politics with unflinching style...
Joseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in ...
Elena Schneider, "The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World" (UNC Press, 2018)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial ...
Jordana M. Saggese, "The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader" (U California Press, 2021)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader (University of California Press, 2021), Jordana Moore Saggese provides the first comprehensive sourcebook on the ...
Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Com...
Jafari S. Allen, "There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life" (Duke UP, 2022)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intell...
Walter Greason and Tim Fielder, "The Graphic History of Hip Hop" (NYC Department of Education, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hip Hop turned 50 this year. It has been five decades since DJ Cool Herc played a party in the Bronx that gave birth to a global cultural revolution. ...
Nessette Falu, "Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil" (Duke UP, 2023)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2023) Nessette Falu explores how Black lesbians in Brazil...
Michelle J. Manno, "Denied: Women, Sports, and the Contradictions of Identity" (NYU Press, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Women’s college basketball is big business—top teams bring in millions of dollars in revenue for their schools. Women’s NCAA games are broadcast...
Trent Masiki, "The Afro-Latino Memoir: Race, Ethnicity, and Literary Interculturalism" (UNC Press, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki...
Jack D. Noe, "Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South" (LSU Press, 2021)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Examining identity and nationalism in the Reconstruction-era South, Jack Noe’s Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and...
Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) pl...
David Steele, "It Was Always a Choice: Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism" (Temple UP, 2022)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by the sports journalist David Steele, who has written for the Sporting News, AOL, the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Ch...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 3: What Is Genealogy
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Genealogy, in Charles Darwin’s terms, is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can g...