David Varel, "The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

episode

New Books in American Studies not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from New Books in American Studies

Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025) 1h 4m · 09 Sep 2026

Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026) 44 min · 09 Sep 2026

Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026) 1h 3m · 08 Sep 2026

Terry Kirby, "The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism" (Reaktion Books, 2024) 51 min · 20 Dec 2025

All episodes from New Books in American Studies →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded12 Jul 2019

Publisherfeeds.megaphone.fm

Handlerec:4814059

Show notes

Allison Davis (1902-1983) was a pioneering anthropologist who did ground-breaking fieldwork in the Jim Crow south, challenged the racial bias of IQ tests, and became the first African American to be tenured at the University of Chicago. And yet despite these contributions Davis's work is little read today. The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought(University of Chicago Press, 2018) is the first full-length biography of Davis ever written. In it, historian David Varel documents Davis's remarkable life. In this episode in New Books in Anthropology we talk about Davis's collaboration with authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Edward Sapir, John Dollard, W. Lloyd Warner Warner, St. Clair Drake, and many others. We also discuss how Davis pioneered concepts such as structural racism and explored the relationship between race and class. David Varel talks about the choices he made as a White academic writing about an African American life, and the importance of widening intellectual genealogies by including 'lost' figures such as Davis. David Varel earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Colorado, Boulder. The Lost Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is his first book. Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is the author of the article "Welcoming the New Amateurs: A future (and past) for non-academic anthropologists" as well as other books and articles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.