New Books in African American Studies

Viola Franziska Müller, "Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South" (UNC Press, 2022)

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South (UNC Press, 2022), Viola Franziska Müller examines runaways who camouflaged t...

Emily A. Owens, "Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women's Survival in Antebellum New Orleans" (UNC Press, 2023)

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In histories of enslavement and in Black women's history, coercion looms large in any discussion of sex and sexuality. At a time when sexual violence ...

We Shall Overcome: Sister Thea Bowman and the Black Catholic Experience

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Though we are all one—“there is neither Jew nor Greek,” St. Paul wrote to the Galatians—each of us brings a particular heritage to the mosaic ...

Paulina Laura Alberto et al., "Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) offers English translations of more than one hun...

Lisa Biggs, "The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last five decades, Black women have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the global prison population, thanks to changes in policies t...

The History of the Black Urban Working-Class in the United States

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joe William Trotter, Jr., Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Founder and Director of the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the...

Miguel Valerio, "Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

14 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sovereign Joy Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) explores the performance of festive black kings and queens ...

Tanya Katerí Hernández, "Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality" (Beacon Press, 2022)

14 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality (Beacon Press, 2022) will challenge what you thought about racism an...

Seeing Truth in the Speculative: A Conversation with Dexter Gabriel

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian and author Dexter Gabriel talks about his relationship to truth and memory in his fiction and non-fiction writing. Come for his thoughts o...

Christopher Loperena, "The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras" (Stanford UP, 2022)

09 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The future of Honduras begins and ends on the white sand beaches of Tela Bay on the country's northeastern coast where Garifuna, a Black Indigenous pe...

Philippe-Richard Marius, "The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society (University Press of Mississippi, 2022), Philippe-Ri...

Jonathan W. White, "To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln" (UNC Press, 2021)

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White...

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect?

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. Guests Joshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of Hi...

Roger A Sneed, "The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought" (Ohio State UP, 2021)

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought (Ohio State UP, 2021), Professor Roger Sneed illuminates the interplay of Bl...

Dannelle Gutarra Cordero, "She Is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dannelle Gutarra Cordero's expansive study incorporates writers, cultural figures and intellectuals from antiquity to the present day to analyze how d...

Felicity M. Turner, "Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: ...

Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)

30 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper mora...

Abdul Alkalimat, "The Future of Black Studies" (Pluto Press, 2022)

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pu...

Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Books, 2022)

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

"History recalls Wallace’s inaugural address as a set piece in the larger drama of defending Southern segregation, which it was. But the speech was ...

Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, "The Philosophy of Marronage" (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021)

25 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Pedro Lebrón Ortis's book The Philosophy of Marronage (Filosofía del cimarronaje) theorizes the broader context behind the notion of "cimarronaje...

Naa Oyo A. Kwate, "White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

25 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located ...

Michael Ayers Trotti, "The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South" (UNC Press, 2022)

23 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Ayers Trotti's The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion and Punishment in the American South (The University of North Carolina Press, 202...

Craig Seymour, "Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross" (2017)

21 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was ...

Lyzette Wanzer, "Trauma, Tresses, and Truth: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)

21 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Black women continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military...

Jacob Kramer, "The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance" (Temple UP, 2015)

21 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance (Temple University Pre...

Quito J. Swan, "Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colonialism, and the African World" (NYU Press, 2022)

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colon...

Matthew F. Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregat...

Sonya Y. Ramsey, "Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership" (UP of Florida, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership (UP of Florida, 2022) examines a life of remarkable achievements and...

Gregory Smithsimon, "Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism" (NYU Press, 2022)

16 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-C...

Philip Nanton, "Riff: The Shake Keane Story" (Papillote Press, 2022)

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Nanton's new book Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 2022) follows the life and work of Shake Keane, the peripatetic and creative...

Autumn Womack, "The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthe...

Virginia L. Summey, "The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Virginia L. Summey's book The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores the life and contribution...

Barbara E. Mattick, "Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South" (Catholic U of America Press

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) discusses the work of the S...

Barbara Harris Combs, "Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society (U Georgia Press, 2022) asserts that anti-Black racism is not better than it used to b...

On James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time"

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The writer and activist James Baldwin grew up in a majority white America that saw white American lives as standard and universal, and Black American ...

Ryan Thomas Skinner, "Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of...

Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the ...

Jasmine Nichole Cobb, "New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair" (Duke UP, 2022)

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis, “natural hair” has been associated with the Black freedom struggle. In New Growth: The Art and Texture o...

Gregory Nobles, "The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798–1865) is a remarkable story of a Black woman’s journey from slavery to emancipation, from antebellum New Jer...

Tara T. Green, "Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was formerly enslaved and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering activist...

Marquis Bey, "Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender" (Duke UP, 2022)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (Duke UP, 2022), Marquis Bey meditates on the antagonistic relationship between blackness and c...

Ray Scott, "The NBA in Black and White: The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach" (Seven Stories Press, 2022)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“There’s a basic insecurity with Black guys my size,” Scott writes. “We can’t hide and everybody turns to stare when we walk down the street...

Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be...

Jeanne Theoharis, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" (Beacon Press, 2015)

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2015) is the definitive political biography of Rosa Parks and the basis for a 2022 documentary...

Anna Arabindan-Kesson, "Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World" (Duke UP, 2021)

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (Duke UP, 2021), Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity centra...

Rhonda F. Levine, "When Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City" (Routledge, 2019)

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In When Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City (Routledge, 2019), Rhonda Levine provides a 15-year ethnography that follo...

Caroline Grego, "Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South" (UNC Press, 2022)

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. ...

Paul Barba, "Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Most of what people think they know about Texas history is wrong, argues Bucknell University history professor Paul Barba in Country of the Cursed an...

Elliott H. Powell, "Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From Beyoncé's South Asian music-inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane's use of Indian song structur...

Psyche A. Williams-Forson, "Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America" (UNC Press, 2022)

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America (UNC Press, 2022), Psyche A. Williams-Forson offers her knowledge and experience to illumina...

Riché Richardson, "Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body" (Duke UP, 2020)

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body (Duke UP, 2020), Riché Richardson examines iconic black women lead...

Jeffrey Bellin, "Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How it Can Recover" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches per...

R. Isabela Morales, "Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2022)

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slave...

Therí Alyce Pickens, "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" (Duke UP, 2019)

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke UP, 2019), Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the ...

Kathryn Gin Lum, "Heathen: Religion and Race in American History" (Harvard UP, 2022)

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Heathen: Religion and Race in American History (Harvard University Press, 2022), Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the “heathen” has been...

Muggsy Bogues and Jake Uitti, "Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball" (Triumph, 2022)

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up, Muggsy Bogues was always told he should do something else, anything besides basketball. He never acknowledged his many doubters except to ...

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...

On Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

09 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1987, Toni Morrison published her fourth novel, Beloved, based on the story of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery with her child. Garner ...

Todd Meyers, "All That Was Not Her" (Duke UP, 2022)

09 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Mey...

Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical intervention...

Aisha Khan, "The Deepest Dye: Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2021)

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Deepest Dye: Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2021), Aisha Khan explores how colonial categories of ...

Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach, "Dream Books and Gamblers: Black Women's Work in Chicago's Policy Game" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ubiquitous illegal lotteries known as policy flourished in Chicago's Black community during the overlapping waves of the Great Migration. Policy "quee...

Christopher Stuart Taylor, "Flying Fish in the Great White North: The Autonomous Migration of Black Barbadians" (Fernwood, 2016)

04 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Canadians are proud of their multicultural image both at home and abroad. But that image isn t grounded in historical facts. As recently as the 1960s,...

4.5 The Best Error You Can Make: Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Baptiste Naudy on Claude McKay

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What can a French translator do with a novelist who writes brilliantly about the “confrontation between Englishes?” How can such a confrontation b...

Jeremi Suri, "Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy" (PublicAffairs, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1865, the Confederacy was defeated, but the military victory did not end the tensions of the war or signal acceptance of a new, more equal nation. ...

Matthew Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Matthew Delmont about his new book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (V...

Sarah Quesada, "The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2022) unearths a buried African archive within widely-read Lati...

Elizabeth Drame et al., "The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism" (Peter Lang, 2020)

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism (Peter Lang, 2020) presents nuanced perspectives in the for...

Sam W. Haynes, "Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas" (Basic Books, 2022)

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam H...

Mario Nisbett, "The Workings of Diaspora: Jamaican Maroons and the Claims to Sovereignty" (Lexington Books, 2021)

29 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Engaging the past, the present, and the future, The Workings of Diaspora: Jamaican Maroons and the Claims to Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2021) sh...

Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in f...

Guy Lancaster, "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" (U Arkansas Press, 2021)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of w...

Lynn M. Hudson, "West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

California was born "under the shadow of slavery," writes Lynn Hudson, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In West of Jim ...

Kelisha B. Graves, ed., "Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900-1959" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has long been excluded from the literary canon. I...

Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, ...

Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlan...

Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists ...

Kwame Edwin Otu, "Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana (University of California Press, 2022) is an ethnogr...

On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By the early 19th century, slavery was still a brutal reality in southern U.S. states, and a growing movement to abolish slavery nationwide was taking...

Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Ye...

David Weinfeld, "An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism" (Cornell UP, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism (Cornell UP, 2022), David Weinfeld presents the bio...

Patricia A. Turner, "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lo...

Radicalism, Humility, and Racism in America

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode focuses on the new book by Lydia Moland, who is a Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. Her book, Lydia Maria Child: A Radical ...

Charles Sawyer, "B. B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the 'King of the Blues'" (Schiffer Publishing, 2022)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Want to take a trip with the king of the Blues? As B.B. King’s photographer and original biographer, Charlie Sawyer was along for the ride. In B.B....

Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan W. Concannon, "Does Scripture Speak for Itself?: The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of ...

Sami Schalk, "Black Disability Politics" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Disability Politics (Duke UP, 2022) Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism fr...

Anima Adjepong, "Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra" (UNC Press, 2021)

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Beyond simplistic binaries of the dark continent or Africa Rising, Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian pra...

Kathryn Gin Lum, "Heathen: Religion and Race in American History" (Harvard UP, 2022)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly co...

Emerald Garner, "Finding My Voice" (Haymarket, 2022)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this unforgetable memoir, Emerald Garner recounts her father's cruel and unjust murder, the immense pain that followed, the pressures of an exploit...

Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made ...

On Trafficking Hadassah and Book of Esther

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar (she/her/hers) is an adjunct professor at Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) in the Religious Studies Department. She received he...

Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Derbew’s new book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022) asks how should articulations of blackness from the fifth ce...

NBN Classic: Courtney Pace, "Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall" (U Georgia Press, 2019)

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vi...

NBN Classic: Anne Balay, "Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers" (UNC Press, 2018)

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In this multi-layered ethnogra...

Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean, "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing" (Verso, 2022)

28 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in t...

NBN Classic: Garrett Felber, "Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State" (UNC Press, 2020)

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Challenging incarceration and ...

NBN Classic: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman" (37 Ink, 2019)

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Harriet Tubman is best known a...

NBN Classic: Alys Eve Weinbaum, "The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History" (Duke UP, 2019)

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In The Afterlife of Reproducti...

NBN Classic: Marcia Chatelain, "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America" (Liveright, 2020)

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Franchise: The Golden Arches i...

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)

23 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...