Podcasts by New Books in African American Studies

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect? from 2023-01-06T09:00

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. GuestsJoshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of History at Boston CollegeNancy Isenberg, author of ...

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect? from 2023-01-06T09:00

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. GuestsJoshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of History at Boston CollegeNancy Isenberg, author of ...

On James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" from 2022-12-05T09:00

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 lives as different and particular. But in his 1...

On Toni Morrison's "Beloved" from 2022-11-09T09:00

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 and her daughter were discovered by slave catch...

On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from 2022-10-21T08:00

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 hold. In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe published...

On W. E. B. DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk" from 2022-08-16T08:00

Nearly 40 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, American writer, sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. DuBois shed light on Black life in America and what it meant to be se...

On Frederick Douglass from 2022-08-15T08:00

When Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, it was illegal for him to learn the alphabet. Slave masters feared the power of a literate slave, so Douglass vowed to read. He became one of ...

Negro Literature from 2022-07-11T08:00

Elizabeth McHenry talks about the moment in the history of African American literature in the decade following the 1896 legalization of segregation, the subject of her new book To Make Negro Litera...

Lundy Braun, "Breathing Race into the Machine" (U Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“We cannot get answers to questions that cannot be asked.” Lundy Braun’s influential book, Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics (Univ...

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitive history of black women but a sourcebook to le...

Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era” (Columbia UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Baker makes the argument that many contemporary b...

Asher Price, "Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Earl Campbell was a force in American football, winning a state championship in high school, rushing his way to a Heisman trophy for the University of Texas, and earning MVP as he took the Houston ...

Mitch Kachun, “First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores how Crispus Attucks’ death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance ...

Frank Dobson, Jr., “Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks and Whites, Love and Death” (Plain View Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Frank Dobson, Jr.‘s Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks and Whites, Love and Death (Plain View Press, 2010) is a single-authored collection of fiction. It includes the opening, gripping novella ...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...

Marcia Walker-McWilliams, “Reverend Addie: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (U. Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Addie Wyatt stands at the intersection of unionism, feminism, and civil rights activism in post-World War II America. In Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equa...

Deborah Whaley, “Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities” (SUNY, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Deborah Whaley’s new book Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (SUNY Press, 2010) may be the first full-length study of a Bl...

John L. Brooke, "'There Is a North': Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War" (U Mass Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does political change take hold? In the 1850s, politicians and abolitionists despaired, complaining that the “North, the poor timid, mercenary, driveling North” offered no forceful opposition t...

Tanya Ann Kennedy, “Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture” (SUNY Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tanya Ann Kennedy‘s book, Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture (SUNY Press, 2017), is a complex and important exploration of our collective underst...

Nikky Finney, “Head Off and Split: Poems” (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Books in African American Studies and the New Books ...

Peter Kerasotis, "Alou: My Baseball Journey" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

All aficionados of baseball are familiar with the pathbreaking role of Jackie Robinson in reintegrating the game back in 1947. What many fans are less familiar with are the issues that Latinos of c...

Rosalind Rosenberg, “Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray, an activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest whose l...

Harvey Young, “Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body” (University of Michigan, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 harmony. Harvey Young is not one of them. When...

Rebecca Scofield, "Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West" (U Washington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what it means to be in the West. ...

Tommy J. Curry, “The Man-Not: Race, Class, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood” (Temple UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning field of Black Male Studies. The author posits t...

Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 bands was The Velvet Underground. They were fro...

Jonathan Rothwell, "A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inequality in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past decades -- on that there is agreement. There is less agreement on the causes of that inequality, the consequences of it, and, perhaps...

Ira Dworkin, “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his 1903 hit “Congo Love Song,” James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song’s title may appear consistent with that narrative, i...

Kwasi Konadu, “The Akan Diaspora in the Americas” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can those in African, Africana, and African American Studies strengthen their disciplinary ties? What do these connections have to do with Kwasi Konadu‘s recent study The Akan Diaspora in the A...

Ruha Benjamin, "Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. In Race Aft...

Patricia Spears Jones, “A Lucent Fire: New and Collected Poems” (White Pines Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jackson Poetry Prize Winner Speaks Patricia Spears Jones has been writing poetry since she was twenty and then she was “good.” Today, the prolific poet is the winner of one of the most prestigious...

Elizabeth Abel, “Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow” (University of California Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I think this is really interesting. Among the thousands of iconic and easily recognizable photographs of segregated water fountains in the American South, you will almost never find one that featur...

Daniel Schwartz, "Ghetto: The History of a Word" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The word “ghetto” has taken on different meanings since its coinage in the 16th century. The uses of this term have varied considerably, from its original understanding as a compulsory Jewish quart...

Leigh Fought, “Women in the World of Frederick Douglass” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a detailed and rich portrait of Frede...

Alan Nadel, “August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle” (University of Iowa Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 1990s, he focused our attention on Wilson’s pl...

David Wheat, "Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David Wheat’s fantastic book Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) argues that the extensive participation of Luso-Africans, Latinized Afri...

Max Krochmal, “Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era” (UNC, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is about the “other” Texas, not the state known for its cowboy conser...

Blair Ruble, “Washington’s U Street: A Biography” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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” (most places in DC are just “streets”) or why a lot of ...

Wendy Gonaver, "The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Wendy Gonaver discusses her book, The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Virginia, and...

Marlene Banks, “Ruth’s Redemption” (Lift Every Voice, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s A Love Story. Set in the 1800s, Ruth’s Redemption (Lift Every Voice, 2012), is an unusual depiction of the lives of slaves and free blacks in pre-Civil War America. Although a slave, Bo is ed...

Chad L. Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians, participants, and politicians strove to limit the...

Dave Tell, "Remembering Emmett Till" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Dr. Dave Tell (he/him/his)-...

Brittney C. Cooper, “Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women” (U. Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Brittney C. Cooper, who is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, explores the intellectual genealogy and geography of the work of African-American women ov...

Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease” (Beacon Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are two to three times more likely than white Americ...

William P. Hustwit, "Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of Talking Legal History, Siobhan talks with William P. Hustwit about his book Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is t...

Jeanine Michna-Bales, “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When the Sun comes back And the first quail calls Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. -“Follow the Drinkin’ Go...

Charles Lane, “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction” (Henry Holt, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Washington almost a century to intercede on the behal...

Derrick E. White, "Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football" (UNC, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Derrick E. White's new book Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) chronicles the development o...

Michelle D. Commander, “Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle D. Commander examines the (im)possibility of literal and figurative returns to Africa of...

Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” (Norton, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 fascinating new book The History of White People (Norton,...

AfroAm Studies Roundtable: Ashley Farmer on "Archiving While Black" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For histories to be written, historians must engage archival material. What happens, though, when particular groups of historians do not feel like they have full access to archival material(s), sim...

Kathy Wilson Florence, “Jaybird’s Song” (Kathy Wilson Florence, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Josie Flint, known as Jaybird, narrates her story of life in Atlanta during the turbulent South as Jim Crow laws come to an end. Her school desegregates. The country meanders through new ideas brou...

Kyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces” (Black Threads Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“art” is made in New York and Paris; “craft” is made in Omaha...

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman" (37 Ink, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing str...

Michael W. Twitty, “The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South” (Amistad, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The “ownership” of Southern food is a divisive cultural issue, reflective of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in America. Michael Twitty shares with us that struggle in The Cooking Gene: A J...

Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA...

Nina Sun Eidsheim, "The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples of hi...

Tom Adam Davies, “Mainstreaming Black Power” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is Black Power? Does it still exist in the so-called post-racial 21st Century? How does Black Power relate to similar movements, like Black Lives Matter? There as so many questions, but there ...

Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known to history as the “Tuskegee Airmen.” In light of the...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...

Shelvy Haywood Keglar, “Underdog to Top Dog: An Improbable Rise” (IBJ, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most psychology books are written by experts with knowledge deriving from professional experience–for which we are grateful. Occasionally, a psychologist ventures to write a book that draws from in...

Amy Bass, “Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W. E. B. Du Bois” (Minnesota UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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. She did not, and most Americans wouldn’t eith...

Jay Driskell, "Schooling Jim Crow: The Fight for Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School" (UVA Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Jay Driskell of Hood College, author of Schooling Jim Crow: The Fight for Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School and the Roots of Black Protest Politics (University of Virginia Press,...

John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) brea...

Jack Greene and Philip Morgan, “Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal” (Oxford UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 University Press have initiated a book series cal...

Zoltan Hajnal, "Dangerously Divided: How Race and Class Shape Winning and Losing in American Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Dangerously Divided: How Race and Class Shape Winning and Losing in American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Zoltan Hajnal examines the political impact of the two most...

Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch, “Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), Associa...

Leslie Schwalm, “Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest” (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War. But have you heard of “Northern Reconstruction?” Probably not. I hadn’t either until I read Leslie Schwalm’s ...

Nicholas Buccola, "The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nicholas Buccola’s new book, The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton University Press, 2019), uses the iconic debate between Baldw...

Paul Youngquist, “A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the d...

Matt Wasniewski, et al., “Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007” (U.S. House of Representatives, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 for the cause of equality, Mr. Obama is hardly the...

W. Caleb McDaniel, "Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her ...

Christopher Mele, “Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Urban sociologists typically use a few grand narratives to explain the path of the American city through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These include industrialization, mass immig...

Colin Grant, “Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey” (Oxford UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 historian who is also an excellent writer?” I’m ...

Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall, "Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Re-Imaging Gender in Wakanda" (WDL, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Wakanda Dream Lab’s anthology, Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Re-Imaging Gender in Wakanda, features the work of writers, artists, and activists, as they imagine gender justice through the framework...

Britt Rusert, “Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (New York University Press,...

Colin Gordon, “Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 the American City (University of Pennsylvania Pr...

Jared Hardesty, "Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England" (Bright Leaf, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shortly after the first Europeans arrived in seventeenth-century New England, they began to import Africans and capture the area’s indigenous peoples as slaves. By the eve of the American Revolutio...

Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theo...

Eric Gardner, “Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West” (University Press of Mississippi, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Black Journalist of the Early West (University...

Greta de Jong, "You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Greta de Jong of the University of Nevada, Reno, discusses her book, You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Pr...

Melissa L. Cooper, “Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history that upends a long tradition of scrutinizing th...

Kevin Mumford, “Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America” (New York UP, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, 2007). Dr. Mumford is an Associate Professor o...

Marc Dollinger, "Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s" (Brandeis UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Brandeis University Press, 2018), Professor Marc Dollinger who holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies an...

Stanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore” (U. Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vis...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...

Sarah Bracey White, “Primary Lessons: A Memoir” (CavanKerry Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As an African-American child growing up in the segregated pre-Civil Rights South, Sarah Bracey White pushed against the social conventions that warned her not to rock the boat, even before she was ...

Brenna Wynn Greer, "Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brenna Wynn Greer’s new study Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), provides a fascinating look at a trio of black imagema...

Stafanie Deluca, et.al. “Coming of Age in the Other America” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do you think that what poor people most need to escape poverty is grit? Join us as we speak with Stefanie Deluca, co-author, along with Susan Clampet-Lundquist and Kathryn Edin, of Coming of Age in...

Steven White, "World War II and American Racial Politics: Public Opinion, the Presidency, and Civil Rights Advocacy" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

World War II played an important role in the trajectory of race and American political development, but the War's effects were much more complex than many assume. In order to unpack these complexit...

Samuele F.S. Pardini, “In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen” (Dartmouth, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen (Dartmouth, 2017) emphasizes the racial “in-betweenness” of Italian Ame...

Karen Cox, "Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South" (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Karen Cox, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, discusses her new book, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South (University of North Caroli...

James A. Cosby, “Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched American Bandstand, or spent any hours viewing mu...

David Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed (Cambridge University Press, 2019...

Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, “Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Puerto Rico is often depicted as a “racial democracy” in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto R...

Richard Bell, "Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home" (Simon and Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Bell is the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, published by Simon & Schuster in 2019. Stolen tells the true story of how five young ...

Marlene Banks, “Son of A Preacher Man” and “Greenwood and Archer” (Lift Every Voice, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The tragic Tulsa Race Riots plus a smidgeon of romance equals to a compelling historical saga. Marlene Banks weaves fact and fiction together illustrating how law and culture may change but human n...

T. L. Bunyasi and C. W. Smith, "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith have written an accessible and important book about the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and broader considerations of, essentially, how we got to where...

Daina Ramey Berry, “The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Beacon Press, 2017) will have a ...

Rafia Zafar, "Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Rafia Zafar about her 2019 book Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning, from the University of Georgia Press. It’s part of the ...

Ruth Beckford and Careth Reid, “The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph” (Arcadia, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not w...

Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres, "Black British Migrants in Cuba" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres' new book Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898–1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) invites readers to ent...

Mia Mask, “Divas on the Screen: Black Women in American Film” (U. of Illinois Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Five charismatic women navigate uneven terrain of racial gender and class stereotypes: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry. The quintet charisma, as explor...

Gregory P. Downs, "After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War" (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On April 8, 1865, after four years of civil war, General Robert E. Lee wrote to General Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender ...

Steve Aldous, “The World of Shaft: A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films and Television Series” (McFarland, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who’s the black private dick That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) Ya damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck For his brother man? (Shaft) Can you dig it? Who’s the cat t...

Paul Musselwhite, "Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Early American colonialism is often distinguished by an urban and rural divide. Urban development was a sign of imperial progress. British writers frequently boasted about the size of early Boston ...

Quincy T. Mills, “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America” (UPenn Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Business. Community. Politics. That’s the making of a barbershop. In Cutting Along the Color Lines: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), Dr. Quincy Mi...

Cécile Vidal, "Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives,Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (University of North Carolina Press and the Omohundro Institute, 2019), offers a ...

James McGrath Morris, “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press” (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his acclaimed biography Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017), James McGrath Morris explores the fascinating life of pioneering bla...

Remi Joseph-Salisbury, "Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience" (Emerald, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the experiences of mixed-race men? In Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience (Emerald Publishing, 2018),  Remi Joseph-Salisbury, a Presidential Fell...

Patrick Phillips, “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America” (W.W. Norton, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and ...

Tyina Steptoe, “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” (U. California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do you know about Houston, Texas? That Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States? That Houston was the home of the 2016 NCAA Final Four in basketball and the home of the NFL’s Su...

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, "Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant is the author of Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. Threatening Property e...

Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappointed, or concerned with the lack of diversity d...

Claudia Leal, "Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia" (U Arizona Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claudia Leal’s Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia (University of Arizona Press, 2018), narrates the unknown history of the transition ...

Jeroen Dewulf, “The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) presents the history of the nation’s forgotten Dutch slave com...

Ashanté M. Reese, "Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C." (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), by Ashanté M. Reese, examines the ways in which residents of the Deanwoo...

Amy Brown, “A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School (U. Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There has been much talk in the news recently about funding for public education, the emergence of charter schools, and the potential of school vouchers. How much does competition for financing in ...

Thomas Aiello, "The Grapevine of the Black South" (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the summer of 1928, William Alexander Scott began a small four-page weekly with the help of his brother Cornelius. By 1932 the Atlanta World had become a daily paper and the basis of Scott's vis...

Kerry Pimblott, “Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois” (U. Press of Kentucky, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When you think of black power, do you think about churches and religious institutions, or do you relate them more to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? How do the social justice stru...

Scott Heerman, "The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country" (U Pennsylvania, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scott Heerman is the author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018. The Alchemy of Slavery exam...

Deborah Hopkinson “Steamboat School” (Jump At the Sun, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Steamboat School (Jump at the Sun, 2016), an historical picture book based on true events, author Deborah Hopkinson recounts the story of Reverend John Berry Meachum’s brave act to defy an 1847 ...

Jennifer Jensen Wallach, "What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Jennifer Jensen Wallach about the her book Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019...

Carol Hardy-Fanta and Dianne Pinderhughes, “Contested Transformation: Race, Gender, and Political Leadership in 21st Century America” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week on the podcast, I speak with Carol Hardy-Fanta and Dianne Pinderhughes, the co-authors (along with Pei-te Lien and Christine Marie Sierra) of Contested Transformation: Race, Gender, and P...

Mark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United States. She understood that her family’s backgr...

Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken, “Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“There were black Germans?” My students are always surprised to learn that there were and are a community of African immigrants and Afro-Germans that dates back to the nineteenth century (and some...

Michael F. Conlin, "The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In an incisive analysis of over two dozen clauses as well as several 'unwritten' rules and practices, The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2019) shows h...

Robyn C. Spencer, “The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the first substantive account of the birthplace of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Robyn C. Spencer’s The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Duke Uni...

Chelene Knight, "Dear Current Occupant" (Book*hug, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today, I’m talking with Chelene Knight. She’s written a new memoir called Dear Current Occupant (Book*hug, 2018). And as her title suggests, it’s a letter of sorts, one written to those people who ...

Holly Charles, “Velvet” (AuthorHouse, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever wondered about your family history, and how family traditions or secrets through the years may affect you, your behavior, and major aspects of your life? Velvet (AuthorHouse, 2013) be...

William Sturkey, "Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you really want to understand Jim Crow—what it was and how African Americans rose up to defeat it—you should start by visiting Mobile Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the heart of the histori...

Tom Rice, “White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan” (Indiana U. Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There has been much discussion recently in the United States about the contentious recent presidential election. Along with the election results, there has also been an increased interest in the so...

Harriet Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind" (Little, Brown Spark, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Environmental racism is visible not only as cancer clusters or the location of grocery stores. It is responsible for the reported gap in IQ scores between white Americans and Black, Latinx, and Nat...

Toni Pressley-Sanon, “Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen (McFarland, 2016) dwells on the intersections of memory, history, and cultural production in both Africa and the African diaspora. T...

Hendrik Hartog, "The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation...

Ben Westhhoff, “Original Gangtas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap” (Hachette, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The real story behind the origin of gangsta rap is difficult to discern. Between the bombastic rhetoric and imagery, the larger-than-life characters, and the subsequent success of many of the indiv...

Kevin M. Levin, "Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin M. Levin is the author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Searching for Black Confederates...

Manisha Sinha, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition” (Yale UP, 2016). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for...

David Doddington, "Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2018)  demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparison, and conflict in shaping gender and status in ...

Sylvester Johnson, “African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When and where do African American religions begin? Sylvester Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University, disrupts the traditional tem...

Niambi Michele Carter, "American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Just in time for the APSA annual meeting, Niambi Michele Carter has written an incredibly timely book on a central issue to American politics, American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, ...

Timothy S. Huebner, “Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism” (U. Press of Kansas, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Timothy S. Huebner, the Irma O. Sternberg Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, has written Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism (University Press of Kansa...

Kevin Dawson, "Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Long before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near lakes, or close to the ocean. In those waterways...

Bill V. Mullen, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line,” (Pluto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Born just five years after the abolition of slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois died the night before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963. In the ma...

Patricia A. Banks, "Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the future, and what is the past, of the African American Museum? In Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance(Routledge, 2019), Patricia Banks, an associate...

Jane Eppinga, “Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate” (Wild Horse Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The remarkable story of Henry Ossian Flipper, a young man born into slavery on the eve of the Civil War, and his struggle for recognition left its mark on our nations history. Through extensive res...

Simon Balto, "Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago From Red Summer to Black Power" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent scholarship locates the origins of mass incarceration in national anticrime policy from 1960 to 1990, and has drastically reframed the “punitive turn” in American politics as bipartisan. But...

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Enduring Truths: Sojourner’s Shadows and Substance” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself ...

Paul Finkelman, "Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz College, about his book Supreme Injustice: Slavery in...

Corey D. Fields, “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans” (U. of California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 2016 election cycle will be remembered as one for the history books. Many people are left asking questions as to what happened to lead to such an expected outcome, while still others are left w...

Joshua D. Farrington, "Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Reflecting on his fifty-year effort to steer the Grand Old Party toward black voters, Memphis power broker George W. Lee declared, "Somebody had to stay in the Republican Party and fight." As Joshu...

Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we understand the coexisting desire and revulsion of th...

Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, "For Black Trans Girls Who Gotta Cuss A Mother F*cker Out When Snatching An Edge Ain’t Enough" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi has written her own beautiful choreo drama titled For Black Trans Girls Who G...

Ashaki Jackson, “Surveillance” (Writ Large Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Now in its fifth printing of a very short life, Ashaki Jackson’s Surveillance examines the relationship between acts of violence, the witnessing of violence, the witnessing of the witnessing of vio...

Mary-Elizabeth Murphy, "Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, DC, 1920-1945" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though women’s roles in the black freedom struggle remain under-acknowledged, scholars continue to make their importance clear. In her new book, Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles ...

Susan Greenbaum, “Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of the Moynihan Report on Cruel Images about Poverty” (Rutgers UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Patrick Moynihan’s Report on the Negro Family was a seminal document in Great Society-era racial politics and public policy. Join us as we talk with Susan Greenbaum about her new book, Blaming the ...

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, "Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic, published by New York University Press in 2019. Vagrants and Vagabonds focuse...

LaShawn Harris, “Sex Workers, Psychics and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy” (U. of Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

LaShawn Harris is an assistant professor of history at Michigan State University. Sex Workers, Psychics and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy, (University of Illino...

Claudrena N. Harold, "Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity" (U Virginia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When hate groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, triggering an eruption of racist violence, the tragic conflict reverberated throughout the world. It also had a profound effect on the Unive...

Ethan Michaeli, “The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Ethan Michaeli charts the riveting history of the Chicago Defender, one of the nat...

Lenora Warren, "Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lenora Warren about her book, Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886, published by Rutgers University Press in 2019. Fire on the Water looks at...

Natalie Byfield, “Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story” (Temple UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story (Temple University Press, 2014) offers a timely reminder of how racial bias and prejudice continue to shape political perspectives ...

Grégory Pierrot, "The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the Ta-Nehisi Coates–authored Black Panther comic book series (2016),  recent films Django Unchained (2012), The Birth of a Nation (2016), Nate Parker’s cinematic imagining of the Nat Turner r...

Damien M. Sojoyner, “First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Damien M. Sojoyner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, entitled First Strike: Educa...

Jaime Alves, "Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 2018 election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil has brought the issues of police violence, racial discrimination, and misogyny to the fore. Jaime Alves’s book the Anti-Black City:...

Thomas Aiello, “The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, and the Debate that Shaped the Course of Civil Rights” (ABC-CLIO, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thomas Aiello is associate professor of history and African American studies at Valdosta State University. In The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and the D...

Ryan A. Quintana, "Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ryan A. Quintana is the author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. Making a Slave State examined how...

Jack Hamilton, “Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British recording artists of the 1960s to explain what ...

Ashley Robertson, "Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State" (The History Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as well. From the founding of the Daytona Literary...

Elizabeth Reich, “Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, and the Transformation of American Cinema” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth Reich is an assistant professor of film studies at Connecticut College in New London. Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, and the Transformation of American Cinema (Rutger...

Christy Clark-Pujara, "Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island" (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island(NYU Press, 2016; paperback, 2018), Christy Clark-Pujara, Associate Professor of History in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the Unive...

Eric Gardner, “Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Gardner’s new study Black Print Unbound: the Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015) explores the development and voice of the C...

Andrew Torget, "Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850" (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformatio...

Marisa J. Fuentes, “Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive” (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marisa J. Fuentes’, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) is an important new book that challenges historians to think more carefully...

Courtney Pace, "Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first full-length critical study of Rev. Dr. Prathia Laura Ann Hall (1940–2002), an undersung leader in...

Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ibram X. Kendi is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books, 2016)...

Anne Twitty, "Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anne Twitty is the author of Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Before Dred Scott looks at numerous...

Loki Mulholland, et.al. “She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland” (Shadow Mountain, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Anyone can make a difference. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember you don’t have to change the world, just change your world.” –Joan Trumpauer Mulholland In the ear...

Thomas A. Foster, "Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented ...

Carol McCabe Booker, ed. “Alone Atop the Hill: The Autobiography of Alice Dunnigan” (U. of Georgia Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Carol McCabe Booker is a Washington, D.C. attorney and former journalist. In the 1960s and 70s, she covered civil rights for the Voice of America, freelanced articles for The Washington Post, Reade...

Kimberly Welch, "Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kimberly Welch is the author of Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Welch is Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Professor of Law a...

Benjamin Fagan, “The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation” (U. of Georgia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, antebellum African Americans elites turned to the newspaper as a means of translating their belief in black “chosenness” into programs for black liberati...

Ann Powers, "Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music" (Dey St. Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music (Dey St. Books, HarperCollins, 2017), Ann Powers explores the rich and, at times, unexpected intersections of love, sex...

Russell Rickford, “We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Russell Rickford is an assistant professor of history at Cornell University. We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2016)...

jayy dodd, "The Black Condition Ft. Narcissus" (Nightboat Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If the prompt is “respond to a myth of Narcissus using thoughtful, meditative poems,” then jayy dodd gave us a beautiful answer. In The Black Condition Ft. Narcissus (Nightboat Books, 2019),  jayy ...

Jon Hale, “The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Jon Hale, Assistant Professor of Educational History, Department of Teacher Education, College of Charleston, joins the New Books Network to discuss his new book, entitled The Freedom Schools: ...

Catherine Keyser, "Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Catherine Keyser about early twentieth century fiction and the role that modern food plays in literature as a language for talking about race and ra...

Susan Cahan, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Yale College. Mounting Frustration: The Art Muse...

Shirletta J. Kinchen, "Black Power in the Bluff City: African American Youth and Student Activism in Memphis, 1965–1975" (U Tennessee Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During the civil rights era, Memphis gained a reputation for having one of the South’s strongest NAACP branches. But that organization, led by the city’s black elite, was hardly the only driving fo...

April R. Haynes, “Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

April R. Haynes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth- Century America (University of...

David Varel, "The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

Anthea Kraut, “Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is it possible to lay claim to ownership of a dance? Is choreography intellectual property? How have shifting conceptions of race and gender shaped the way we think of dance, property and ownership...

Seán Moore, "Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Early American libraries stood at the nexus of two transatlantic branches of commerce—the book trade and the slave trade. Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Pol...

Bert Ashe, “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles” (Agate Bolden, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprec...

Jeremy M. Glick, "The Black Radical Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution" (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What if the Haitian Revolution, perhaps the only “successful” Black revolution in history, weren’t over? On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Dr. Jeremy Matthew...

Tanisha C. Ford, "Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl's Love Letter to the Power of Fashion" (St. Martins Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings,...

Ed Berlin, “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack ...

Julia S. Charles, "That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this chronologically and thematically ambitious study of racial passing literature, Julia Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves—a place she terms that ...

Genevieve Carpio, "Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019), Professor Genevieve Carpio considers tensions around mobility and settlement ...

Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry” (Cornell University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blacks after the Great Migration as leaving “even the m...

Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, "Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-existing European ideas about monstrosity and de...

Tiffany Gill, "To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism" (U Illinois Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks with Tiffany Gill about the history of African American travel in the late twentieth century and its significance to Black communities across the lines of class and gen...

Edlie Wong, “Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The dialectical configuration of black inclusion/Chinese exclusion is at the center of Edlie Wong‘s book Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship (...

John Garrison Marks, "Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas" (U of South Carolina Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference cha...

Yuko Miki, "Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Yuko Miki’s book, Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil(Cambridge University Press, 2018), was the recent recipient of LASA’s 19th-century section Honorabl...

Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 economic effects of music. Laurent Dubois‘ new b...

Tera W. Hunter, "Bound In Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century" (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Americans have long viewed marriage between a white man and a white woman as a sacred union. But marriages between African Americans have seldom been treated with the same reverence. This discrimin...

Nancy Mirabal, "Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1957" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1957 (NYU Press, 2017), Nancy Mirabal details New York Cuban diasporic history between the nineteenth and twentiet...

Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexingto...

Koritha Mitchell, "From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Koritha Mitchell, Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, has written a complex, interdisciplinary, and important analysis focusing on black women as the lens to explore the in...

Stephen R. Duncan, "The Rebel Café: Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America’s Nightclub Underground" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife?from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians?have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In The Rebel Ca...

Jason Bivins, “Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jazz is often dubbed the greatest American original art form. This claim might be difficult to contend. But a close exploration of the folks who created, listened, and participated in jazz environm...

Brandi T. Summers, "Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While Washington, D.C., is still often referred to as “Chocolate City,” it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents thi...

Dorinne Kondo, "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Duke University Press 2018), Dorinne Kondo brings together critical race studies, affect theory, psychoanalysis and her critically kee...

Jonathon S. Kahn and Vincent W. Lloyd, editors, “Race And Secularism in America” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathon S. Kahn is an associate professor of religion at Vassar College. He is co-editor with Vincent W. Lloyd of a collection of essays entitled Race and Secularism in America (Columbia Universit...

Connor Towne O’Neill, "Down Along with That Devil’s Bones" (Algonquin Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Down Along with That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy (Algonquin Books, 2020), journalist Connor Towne O’Neill takes a deep dive into American...

Chris S. Duvall, "The African Roots of Marijuana" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There's so much discussion in the contemporary United States about marijuana. Debates focus on legalization and medicalization. Usually, Reefer Madness, Harry Anslinger, and race are brought into t...

Betina Cutaia Wilkinson, “Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century” (U of Virginia Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Betina Cutaia Wilkinson is the author of Partners or Rivals? Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century (University of Virginia Press 2015). Wilkinson is assistant pro...

Zakkiyah Imam Jackson, "Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world where black(ened) flesh, particularly feminine flesh, is considered the ontological zero of humanness, what interventions and complications are available from art and speculative fiction...

Camisha Russell, "The Assisted Reproduction of Race" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy have been critically examined within philosophy, particularly by feminists and bioethicists, but the role of r...

Lester K. Spence, “Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics” (Punctum Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lester K. Spence is the author of Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (Punctum Books, 2016). Spence is associate professor of political science and Africana Studies a...

Kathryn A. Mariner, "Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States (University of California Press, 2019) offers an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner ...

Shennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard?  Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South.  Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. ...

Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is there a figure in sports more admired and beloved than Muhammad Ali? Widely revered not only as one of boxing’s greatest champions but also as one of the rare athletes to speak out on political ...

Emily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020), Emily J. Lord...

Marisol LeBrón, "Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marisol LeBrón’s new book, Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019), examines the rise of and resistance to punitive governance ...

Keenanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” (Haymarket Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few social justice struggles have captivated recent political history like the broad Black Lives Matter movement. From the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore to campaign rally interruptions of leadi...

Eddie Cole, "The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Some of America’s most pressing civil rights issues—desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech—have been closely intertwined with higher ...

E. Douglas Bomberger, "Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There has been a recent trend in books that explore one year in detail: 1914, 1927, and 1968 have all received this treatment. E. Douglas Bomberger’s new book Making Music American: 1917 and the Tr...

Kimberly Fain, “Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies” (Praeger, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While black men have been portrayed in film for over a hundred years, they have often been stereotyped or portrayed very badly. In her book Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changin...

Warren Hoffman, "The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical", 2nd edition (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Warren Hoffman’s The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical, 2nd edition (Rutgers UP, 2020) explores the ways that race and racism have shaped the American musical from Show Boat to Hamilto...

Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Communication at Louisiana State University--on a ...

Steve Phillips, “Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority” (The New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steve Phillips is the author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (The New Press, 2016). Phillips is a senior fellow at the Center for Ameri...

Karlos K. Hill, "The Murder of Emmett Till: A Graphic History" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The image of Emmett Till’s open coffin, revealing the 14-year old’s horrifically disfigured face, is one of the most heart-wrenching images of the Civil Rights Era. The Chicago teenager was murdere...

Christina Proenza-Coles, "American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World" (NewSouth Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christina Proenza-Coles' new book American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World (NewSouth Books, 2019) reveals men and women of African descent as key protag...

James Davis, “Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean” (Columbia University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This terrific book follows the itinerary of Eric Walrond’s peripatetic life. Born in Guyana in 1898, Walrond lived in Barbados, Panama, New York, Paris, London. As a writer and sharp observer of th...

Felicia Angeja Viator, "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a hip hop track that reflected ...

Daniel HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes, "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dan HoSang and Joe Lowndes’ new book,Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) documents the changing politics of race ...

Jessica Parr, “Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon” (UP of Mississippi, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

George Whitefield was a complex man driven by a simple idea, the new birth that brought salvation. Because of such passion, Whitefield received both enthusiastic support, preaching to audiences num...

Lisa B. Thompson, "Underground, Monroe, and the Mamalogues: Three Plays" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lisa B. Thompson is equally renowned as a scholar of African and African-American studies and as a playwright. Her latest book Underground, Monroe, and the Mamalogues: Three Plays (Northwestern Uni...

Anne Balay, "Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this multi-layered ethnography that centers truck drivers, Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) describes both the long-...

Aisha Durham, “Home With Hip Hop Feminism” (Peter Lang, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is hip hop defined by its artists or by its audience? In Home With Hip Hop Feminism, Aisha Durham returns hip hop scholarship to its roots by engaging in an ethnographic and autoethnographic approa...

Simone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary blac...

Amy Murrell Taylor, "Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved deep into the heart of...

Eric Foner, “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad” (Norton, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this podcast I talk with Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University about his book, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (W. W. Norton &...

Dan Royles, "To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the begi...

Quincy D. Newell, "Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead .......

Neil Roberts, “Freedom as Marronage” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be free? How can paying attention to the relationship between freedom and slavery help construct a concept and practice of freedom that is “perpetual, unfinished, and rooted in...

Nadia Nurhussein, "Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement wit...

Derrick Spires, "The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With talk about birthright citizenship and border walls running rampant in Trump’s America, there are many scholars reaching back to antebellum America to historically ground today’s citizens in de...

Jodi Eichler-Levine, “Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (New York University Press, 2013), Jodi Eichler-Levine, associate professor of Religion Studies ...

Chinua Thelwell, "Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond (U Massachusetts Press, 2020) by Dr. Chinua Thelwell is a rich, well-researched, and sobering investigation of blackface minstrel...

Ali Michael, "Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education" (Teachers College Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I talked with Ali Michael on her award-winning book, Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education (Teachers College Press, 2015). According to a 2014 report by the Na...

Phil Ford, “Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is hip? Can a piece of music be hip? Or is hipness primarily a way of engaging with music which recognizes the hip potential of the music? Or primarily a manner of being, which allows the hip ...

Tamura Lomax, “Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the central threads in the public discourse on Black womanhood is the idea of the “Jezebel.” This trope deems Black women and girls as dishonorable and sexually deviant and the stereotype is...

J Mase III, "And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, and Inappropriate Jokes About Death" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his own description of his book, And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, & Inappropriate Jokes About Death, J Mase III writes, “Feel free to scream directly in...

Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, “Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, a writer and former journalis...

Alexandra J. Finley, "An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alexandra J. Finley is the author of An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. An Intimate Economy ...

Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "Be Free," D’Angelo and the Vanguard's "The Charade,...

Kimberly Fain, “Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Colson Whitehead’s fiction has drawn varied criticism. On the one hand, there’s the scholarship of the African diaspora, a tradition that takes the long view of Whitehead–extrapolating him from the...

Why are Blacks Democrats?: An Interview with Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identi...

Ernest McGowen III, "African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior" (UP of Kansas 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Relative wealth has given suburban African Americans employment opportunities and political resources--but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or elected officials who share their concerns. How d...

Daniel Geary, “Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel Geary is the Mark Pigott Associate Professor in U.S. History at Trinity College Dublin. His book Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 20...

Hannah L. Walker, "Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hannah Walker’s new book, Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race (Oxford UP, 2020), brings together the political science and criminal justice disciplin...

Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, interviews Jeanne Theoharis, distinguished professor ...

Debra Majeed, “Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands” (UP of Florida, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her wonderful new book Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands (University Press of Florida, 2015), Debra Majeed, Professor of Religious Studies at Beloit...

Jerry Gershenhorn, "Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James West speaks with Jerry Gershenhorn, Julius L. Chambers Professor of History at North Carolina Central University, about Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom S...

Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, photographs became key tools in debates surrounding...

Gregory O’Malley, “Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807” (UNC Press for the Omohundro Institute, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gregory E. O’Malley examines a crucial, but almost universally overlooked, aspect of the African slave trade in his new book Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1...

Armstrong Williams, "What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race" (Hot Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race (Hot Books, 2020) explores the complexity of race and culture in the United States. In his third book, renowned conserva...

Andra Gillespie, "Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholars and pundits have been busy trying to assess the legacy of President Barack Obama. Few have done so with the nuance and comparative approach of Andra Gillespie. In her new book Race and the...

Sonja D. Williams “Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sonja D. Williams‘ book Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (University of Illinois Press, 2015) connects its subject to some of the most important events and social movements of his t...

Laura J. Arata, "Race and the Wild West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After Laura Arata first visited Virginia City, Montana in graduate school, she became fascinated by the story of one historical figure—Sarah Bickford, a former slave, who migrated to this frontier,...

Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story. For the first four years of his li...

Leah Wright Rigueur, “The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leah Wright Rigueur is an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her book The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Po...

Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers won’t be able to put down, and that listeners from...

Jamila Lee-Johnson, and Ashley Gaskew, "Critical Theory and Qualitative Data Analysis in Education" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jamila Lee-Johnson and Ashley Gaskew, doctoral students in education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, join us in this episode to discuss their recently published co-edited volume entitled,...

Preston Lauterbach, “Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis” (Norton, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following the Civil War, Memphis emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment, after a period of turmoil. Preston Lauterbach joins host Jonathan Judaken for an in-depth discus...

Ariella Rotramel, "Pushing Back: Women of Color-Led Grassroots Activism in New York City" (U Georgia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City (U Georgia Press, 2020) explores women of color’s grassroots leadership in organizations that are not singularly identified wit...

Max Felker-Kantor, "Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, the treatment of African Americans by police departments around the country has come under increased public scrutiny. As any student of the longer historical relationship between l...

Laura F. Edwards, “A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this podcast I talk with Laura F. Edwards, Peabody Family Professor of History at Duke University about her book, A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambrid...

William L. Patterson, "We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People" (International Publishers, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2017, We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People, the historic petition authored by William L. Patterson, was published in its third edition. It has been nearly 70 year...

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own religious communities and in public discourse about ...

Mia E. Bay, et al., “Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mia Bay is a professor of history at Rutgers University, and Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity. She is co-editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Ca...

Jennifer Cobbina, "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following the high-profile deaths of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, both cities erupted in protest over the unj...

Michael A. Schoeppner, "Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a 'moral contagion' of abolitionism and black autonomy that ...

David George Surdham, “The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David George Surdham is the author of The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Surdham is Associate Professor of Economics at...

Teresa A. Goddu, "Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America (University of Pennsylvania Press) is a richly illustrated history of the American Anti-Slavery Society and its print, material, ...

Racquel J. Gates, "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of African-American representations on screen.  This book...

Carlos Kevin Blanton, “George I. Sanchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although the designation now applies to American citizens of Mexican ethnicity writ large, the term Mexican American (hyphenated or not) also refers to the rising generation of ethnic Mexicans born...

Postscript: A Discussion of Race, Anger and Citizenship in the USA from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we have a serious conversation about race that moves beyond the brevity of Twitter or an op-ed? In this episode of Post-Script (a New Books in Political Science series from Lilly Goren and S...

LaTanya McQueen, "And It Begins Like This" (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, and self. It’s called And It Begins Like This(Bl...

Julian E. Zelizer, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society” (Penguin, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Julian E. Zelizer is the author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (Penguin Press, 2015). Zelizer is the Malcom Stevenson Forbes, Class of ...

Edward C. Valandra, "Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities" (Living Justice Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities (Living Justice Press, 2020) consists of stories that have arisen from the lived experiences of a broad range of seasoned, loving restorative j...

Elena Schneider, "The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial officials, and military officers. In her stunni...

Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox, “Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned off to Politics” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox are the authors of Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned off to Politics (Oxford UP,2015). Lawless is a Professor of Government and the Director...

Hettie V. Williams, "Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History" (Praeger, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black women intellectuals have traditionally been overlooked in the academic study of American intellectual history. Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History (...

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, "They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. In her new book They Were Her Pr...

Ted A. Smith, “Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics” (Stanford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

People living in the modern west generally have no problem criticizing religiously-justified violence. It’s therefore always interesting when I discuss John Brown, a man who legitimized anti-slaver...

Roundtable Discussion of Jennifer Morgan's "Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery" (UPenn Press, 2004) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Welcome to New Books in African American Studies, a channel on the New Books Network. I am your host Adam McNeil. Today is part 2 of my discussion about Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan’s 2004 Laboring Women...

Joseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in 1987. Indeed, his work throughout the decade pu...

Philip A. Wallach, “To The Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis” (Brookings, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Philip A. Wallach is the author of To The Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). Wallach is a fellow in Governance Studies a...

B. Heersink and J. A. Jenkins, "Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Prior to the 1960s, Democrats were seen as having a lock on the South in national and local electoral politics, while Republicans had strengths in other parts of the country. While this was the cas...

Brooke Newman, "A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In an empire built on racial slavery, what roles do blood purity and citizenship play in the creation of subject citizens? This is one of the many questions broached by Dr. Brooke Newman in her new...

Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The historiography of the southern Civil Rights Movement has long focused on the tactic of non-violence. With only a few notable exceptions, most scholarship locates the use of armed self-defense a...

Muhammed Fraser-Rahim, "America’s Other Muslims" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America's Other Muslims: Imam W.D. Mohammed, Islamic Reform, and the Making of American Islam explores the oldest and perhaps the most important Muslim community in America, whose story has receive...

Candis Watts Smith, "Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Candis Watts Smith and Christina Greer are the editors of Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification (Routledge, 2019). Smith is assistant professor of public po...

Andrew Hartman, “The War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Andrew Hartman is associate professor of history at Illinois State University. His book A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2015) provides a w...

Jennifer L. Morgan, "Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2004) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2004, Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan’s Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press) was published. Sixteen years later, Morgan’s Laboring Women stands ...

I. Gould Ellen and J. Steil, "The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates about Housing, Segregation, and Opportunity" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why do people live where they do? What explains the persistence of residential segregation? Why is it complicated to address residential segregation? Please join me as I meet with Dr. Ingrid Gould ...

Rory Carroll, “Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela” (Penguin Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historically, Venezuela is known as one of the most stable Latin American nations of the twentieth century. The subsequent discovery of oil transformed Venezuela into a petrostate. Yet wealth inequ...

Catherine Adel West, "Saving Ruby King: A Novel" (Park Row Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Two south side Chicago families are bound together by a violence-infused past. Ruby’s mother, Alice King, has been murdered. Her father, Lebanon King, is an abusive man who endured a terrible child...

Anne Cheng, "Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Professor of English and Director of the Program ...

Charis Thompson, “Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research” (MIT Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Charis Thompson‘s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book. Good Science explores the “ethical choreography” of the consolidation of human...

Stooges Brass Band, "Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game" (U Mississippi Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen ...

Steve Luxenberg, "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steve Luxenberg has created an unusual history of the famous Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson and the 19th century’s segregationist practices in his book Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Fergu...

Kevin M. Schultz, “Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties” (W. W. Norton, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), Kevin M. Schultz has given us a lively and colorful narrative history that captures the character of two...

Postscript: Shirley Chisholm as Principled Political Strategist from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. “...

Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...

Michael Gould-Wartofsky, “The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the author of The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. There has ...

Simon Hall, "Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s" (Faber and Faber, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 University of Leeds, colorfully details an extraordinary...

Andrew T. Fede, "Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and Atlantic World" (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Andrew T. Fede is a lawyer in private practice in northern New Jersey and an adjunct professor of law at Montclair State University.  His new book Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves...

Miriam Pawel, “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez” (Bloomsbury Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the ins...

Charisse Burden-Stelly, "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History" (ABC-CLIO, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is the scholarship and advocacy work of W.E.B. Du Bois so relevant for 21st century politics? Does his unique combination of both serve as a possible template for today’s freedom movements? Dr....

Kellie Carter Jackson, "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence" (U Penn Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What the United States dubs “freedom” is inherently tied to methods of violence. The United States’s abolitionist movement was not free from this connection. This is in spite of one of the best kno...

Michelle Ann Stephens, “Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why would Bert Williams, famous African-American vaudeville performer of the early twentieth century, feel it necessary to apply burnt cork blackface make-up to his already dark skin, in order to e...

Jessica Marie Johnson, "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent. And it pivo...

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, "A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth Todd-Breland’s new book A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) tells the story of the struggle fo...

Beatrix Hoffman, “Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930” (U of Chicago, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Disputes over the definitions or legality of ‘rights’ and ‘rationing’ in their various guises have animated much of the debate around the United States Affordable Care Act. Many legislators and voc...

A Discussion with J. T. Roane on Writing African American Lives from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Welcome to New Books in African American Studies, a channel on the New Books Network. I am your host, Adam McNeil. Today on the podcast I have the honor of chatting with a good friend, Dr. J. T. Ro...

Martha S. Jones, "Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Martha S. Jones, in her excellent new book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America(Cambridge University Press, 2018), weaves together the legal and constitutional di...

Julian E. Zelizer, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society” (Penguin Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent decades, as Democrats and Republicans have grown more and more polarized ideologically, and gridlock has becoming increasingly standard in Congress, there has been a noticeable pining for...

Benjamin Talton, "In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics" (Pennsylvania UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press) by Benjamin Talton is a transnational history that explores the influence of African America...

Ronald L. Lewis and Robert L. Zangrando, "Walter F. White: The NAACP’s Ambassador for Racial Justice" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though overshadowed today by more celebrated figures, Walter Francis White was one of the most prominent campaigners for civil rights in mid-20th-century America. As Ronald L. Lewis and Robert L. Z...

Lawrence Jacobs, “Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation” (U Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lawrence Jacobs is the author (with James Druckman) of Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair ...

Lauren Michele Jackson, "White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation" (Beacon, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon, 2019), Lauren Michele Jackson analyzes Christina Aguilera, high fashion, the conceptual poetr...

Matthew Bowman, "Christian: The Politics of a Word in America" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The intersection of religion and politics in the United States is one of the nation's most enduring conversations. Christian: The Politics of a Word in America(Harvard University Press, 2018) by Dr...

Mariana Candido, “An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mariana Candido‘s book An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013) is a powerful and moving exploration of the history and develop...

Khary O. Polk, "Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Khary Oronde Polk is the author of Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. Con...

Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of ...

Kirt von Daacke, “Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson’s Virginia” (UVA Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this podcast I talk to Kirt von Daacke about his 2012 work, Freedom Has a Face:Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson’s Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2012). Professor von Daacke is...

Kimberly Brown Pellum, "Black Beauties: African American Pageant Queens in the Segregated South" (History Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Florida A&M University professor and former Miss FAMU Kimberly Brown Pellum, Ph.D., recently released her book, Black Beauties: African American Pageant Queens in the Segregated South (History Pres...

Adrienne Brown, "The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race" (John Hopkins UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adrienne Brown joins the New Books Network this week to talk about her fascinating 2017 book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (John Hopkins University Press, 2017), wh...

Paula T. Connolly, “Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010” (U of Iowa Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The “peculiar institution” upon which the US nation was founded is still rich for examination.Perhaps this is why it is a subject to which 21st century authors continue to return. In this explorati...

Aaron Carico, "Black Market: The Slave's Value in National Culture after 1865" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On the eve of the Civil War, the estimated value of the U.S. enslaved population exceeded $3 billion--triple that of investments nationwide in factories, railroads, and banks combined, and worth mo...

Bianca Williams, “The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Analyses of the lives of black women in the United States often focus on narratives of struggle and sorrow, as black women must contend daily with the intersecting oppressions of sexism and racism....

Carolyn Finney, “Black Faces, White Spaces” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Geographer Carolyn Finney wrote Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), out of a frustration w...

Rae Linda Brown, "Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1933, the Chicago Symphony performed the Symphony in E Minor by Florence B. Price. It was the first time a major American orchestra played a composition by an African American woman. Despite her...

Debra Thompson, "The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Debra Thompson, in her award-winning* book The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explores the complexities of the politics ...

Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos, “Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America” (Oxford UP 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos are the authors of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2014). McAdam is The Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of ...

Kyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created ...

Micah McCrary, "Island in the City" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you read a lot of nonfiction, you may be familiar with what some call the “memoir quandary”—the complaint that memoir and autobiography are too narrowly focused on the writer’s life to be of rea...

Kaeten Mistry, “The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale.  In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge ...

Andrea Benjamin, "Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What explains voting behavior in local elections? More specifically, what explains how ethnic and racial blocs vote in local elections, especially when the candidate may be of a different race or e...

Elliott J. Gorn, "Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of Emmett Till’s death at the hands of white Mississippians is well known. For many Americans, it highlights the racism of the Jim Crow South and was a defining moment that helped galvani...

David Krugler, “1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014), David Krugler chronicles the origins and development of ten major race riots that took pl...

Polly E. Bugros McLean, "Remembering Lucile: A Virginia Family's Rise from Slavery and a Legacy Forged a Mile High" (UP of Colorado, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1918 Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, becoming its first female African American graduate (though she was not allowed to "walk" at g...

Calvin Schermerhorn, "Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At this point, it is hard to fathom the shear volume of studies of American slavery that scholars have produced. And new works on American slavery are being published at a remarkable clip. As a res...

Randy J. Sparks, “Where the Negroes Are Masters” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A kind of biography of the town of Annamaboe, a major slave trading port on Africa’s Gold Coast, Randy J. Sparks‘s book Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade ...

Nate Marshall, "Finna: Poems" (One World, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Finna: Poems (One World), his new collection of poetry, Nate Marshall examines the way that pop culture influences Black vernacular, the role of storytelling, family, and place. Marshall defines...

Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris, "Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas" (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholarly interest in the institution of American slavery is enjoying a kind of resurgence. Researchers are examining heretofore rarely (or never) studied aspects of slavery. One such new frontier ...

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, “Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood” (UNC Press 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo is the author of Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood (UNC Press 2014). She is assistant professor of sociology at the University of ...

Monica Coleman, "Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith" (Fortress Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Monica A. Coleman's great-grandfather asked his two young sons to lift him up and pull out the chair when he hanged himself, and that noose stayed in the family shed for years. The rope was the vio...

Clarence Taylor, "Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his most new book Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (NYU Press, 2018), Clarence Taylor, dean of the history of the civil rights movemen...

Jeff Smith, “Ferguson in Black and White” (Kindle Single, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeff Smith is the author of Ferguson in Black and White (Kindle Single, 2014). Smith is assistant professor of political science at The New School’s Milano Graduate School. Smith writes this book ...

Nyasha Junior, “Reimagining Hagar: Blackness and Bible” (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Popular culture helps shape how audiences imagine Biblical personalities in our contemporary moment. For many, Warner Sallman’s portrait of Jesus fixes him as white, others envision Moses as Charlt...

Ashley D. Farmer, "New Perspectives of the Black Intellectual Tradition" (Northwestern UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The field of African American intellectual history is enjoying a kind of renaissance at the moment. The resurgence is due to the work of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) an...

Dick Lehr, “The Birth of a Nation” (PublicAffairs, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many books on film discuss the artistic aspects of movies, often as they relate to social and political events that affected the filmmakers. In his book The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmm...

Charlton D. McIlwain, "Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford Univeristy Press), Charlton McIlwain, Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development and professo...

Robin Marie Averbeck, "Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robin Marie Averbeck is a writer, activist and teacher at California State University, Chico. Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought (The University of North Caroli...

Jason Sokol, “All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When it came to race relations, the post-World War Two North was different — better — than the South. Or so white people in the northeast told themselves. While Jason Sokol argues that there was a ...

Melissa J. Wilde, "Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although it has largely been erased from the collective memory of American Christianity, the debate over eugenics was a major factor in the history of 20th-century religious movements, with many ch...

William D. Green, "The Children of Lincoln: White Paternalism and the Limits of Black Opportunity in Minnesota, 1860–1876" (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At a speech before the unveiling of the Freedman’s Monument in 1876, Fredrick Douglass stated, “You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are only at best his step-children; children by adoption,...

Cathy L. Schneider, “Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cathy L. Schneider is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). She is associate professor in the School of Internation...

David A. Harris, "A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations" (Anthem Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we move police forces from a warrior culture to connecting better with communities they serve? Today I talked to David A. Harris about his new book A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in ...

Michael Fischbach, "Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the great animating foreign policy issues of the twenty-first century, one that provokes fierce divisions across the world. In the United States, the issu...

Brian Purnell, “Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings” (UP of Kentucky, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholars interested in the history of the civil rights movement in the North will definitely be interested in Brian Purnell‘s new book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings:The Congress of Raci...

Sophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal tria...

Maurice J. Hobson, "The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta" (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Maurice J. Hobson’s new book The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) delves into the tremendously rich histo...

Candis Watts Smith, “Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Candis Watts Smith is the author of Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity (NYU Press, 2014). Watts Smith is assistant professor of political science at Williams College. How do ...

Kevin J. Bryne, "Minstrel Traditions: Mediated Blackface in the Jazz Age" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Blackface minstrel show is typically thought of a form tied to the 19th century. While the style was indeed developed during the Antebellum period, its history stretches well into 20th- and eve...

Kellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the ...

Edward E. Andrews, “Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Often when we think of missions to Native Americans or people of African descent, we think of white missionaries. In his book Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic ...

Philip Butler, "Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Philip Butler explores what might happen if Black people in the United States merged techn...

Laura McEnaney, "Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When World War II ended, Americans celebrated a military victory abroad, but the meaning of peace at home was yet to be defined. From roughly 1943 onward, building a postwar society became the new ...

Eric Allen Hall, “Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When he died from AIDS in 1993, Arthur Ashe was universally hailed as a man of principle, grace, and wisdom–a world-class athlete who had transcended his game. But a closer look at Ashe’s life reve...

Jan Doering, "Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With such high levels of residential segregation along racial lines in the United States, gentrifying neighborhoods present fascinating opportunities to examine places with varying levels of integr...

James Baldwin, "Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This 2018 reprint of Little Man, Little Man exemplifies communal and collaborative textual production. The story was written by James Baldwin and illustrated by French artist Yoran Cazac. It was pu...

John Morrow and Jeffrey Sammons, “Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War” (University Press of Kansas, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Morrow and Jeffrey Sammons share their insights on the story of the fabled 369th Infantry Regiment in their book, Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the Afri...

M. C. Stevenson et al. (eds.), "The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law and Public Policy" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When children become entangled with the law, their lives can be disrupted irrevocably. When those children are underrepresented minorities, the potential for disruption is even greater. The Legacy ...

Jessica Trounstine, "Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

2018 has been a great year for books about sub-national government in the United States. The year ends with another to add to the list. Jessica Trounstine has written Segregation by Design: Local P...

Catherine W. Bishir, ‘Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900’ (UNC Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seeking to fill the gap in scholarship focused on African American artisans in the American South, Catherine W. Bishir uses the very specific location of New Bern, North Carolina to “dig a deep hol...

Andrew Kettler, "The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Andrew Kettler charts the impact that smell had on the making of race and just...

McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...

Melvin Ely, “Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War” (Vintage Books, 2004) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War (Vintage Books, 2004), Melvin Ely uses a trove of documents primarily found in the county co...

Patricia Zavella, "The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism (NYU Press, 2020), Pat Zavella shows how reproductive justice organizations' collaborative work across ra...

Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney, "An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee" (UP of Kentucky, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people will know that Memphis, Tennessee is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. That's too bad, because Memphis played an important role in the struggle for civil rights bot...

Janet Sims-Wood, “Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University” (The History Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There was once a notion that black people had no meaningful history. It’s a notion Dorothy Porter Wesley spent her entire career debunking. Through her 43 years at Howard University, where she help...

Justin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. White Balance explore...

Adam Malka, "The Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Criminal justice, policing, and mass incarceration have gained significant political attention recently, and the problems of these systems have drawn increasingly frequent calls for reform from the...

Adam Ewing, “The Age Of Garvey: How A Jamaican Activist Created A Mass Movement And Changed Global Black Politics” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adam Ewing acknowledges the enduring, if reductive, image of Garveyism – “the parades and shipping lines and colonization schemes” – in its early, Harlem-based incarnation, but focuses The Age Of G...

Raymond Winbush, "The Osiris Papers: Reflections on the Life and Writing of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing" (Black Classics Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today’s interview is with Dr. Raymond Winbush a research professor and the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. Dr. Winbush and Dr. Denise Wright coedited the bo...

John C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960(Lexington Books, 2018), John C. Hajduk examines the emergence of a “rock and roll cultu...

Lauren Araiza, ‘To March for Others: The United Farm Workers and the Black Freedom Movement’ (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving...

Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...

Sharon Block, "Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we have a certain idea of "race"; it's socially constructed, conventional, and not really biological-grounded in any sense.  Yet we commonly use the idea of "race" in our everyday lives to id...

Karl Spracklen, “Whiteness and Leisure” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our taken for granted assumptions are questioned in a new book by Karl Spracklen, a professor of leisure studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. Whiteness and Leisure (Palgrave, 2013) ...

Walter Johnson, "The Broken Heart of America" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

St. Louis, Missouri is the city with the highest rate of police shootings in the United States. It’s the city with an 18 year difference in life expectancy between Black and white neighborhoods whi...

Keisha Lindsay, "In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to most experts, boys have more trouble in schools than girls. Further, African-American boys have even more trouble than, say, white boys. What to do? According to some, one possible sol...

Edward E. Baptist, “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An unflinching examination of the trauma, violence, opportunism, and vision that combined to create the empire for slavery that was the Old South, Ed Baptist‘s new book The Half Has Never Been Told...

Mark Anderson, "From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Anderson’s From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology (Stanford University Press) is at once a story about US anthropology and US liberalism from the 1930s to the 1...

Michael E. Staub, “The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade debate over race, class, and IQ. In The Mismeasure of ...

Gabriel Solis, “Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On November 29, 1957, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holliday, Zoot Sims, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, and a multi-talented young R&B player who played jazz that night, Ray Charles, and others played a bene...

Peniel E. Joseph, "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr." (Basic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do the political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. continue to shape American democracy? How does a common myth of opposition distort our understanding of civil rights? In his...

Ruma Chopra, “Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nov...

Bruce Ackerman, “We the People, Volume 3: The Civil Rights Revolution” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bruce Ackerman is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His book, We the People, Volume 3: The Civil Rights Revolution (Harvard UP, 2013) fills out the constitutio...

Richard Gergel, "Unexampled Courage" (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019), District Judge Richard...

Yael Ben-zvi, “Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories” (Dartmouth College Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Histories of rights have too often marginalized Native Americans and African Americans. Addressing this lacuna, Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories (Dartmouth College Press, 2...

Toby Green, “The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery was pervasive in the Ancient World: you can find it in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In Late Antiquity , however, slavery went into decline. It survived and even flourished in the B...

Matthew Pettway, "Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection: Manzano, Plácido, and Afro-Latino Religion" (UP of Mississippi, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth...

Vernon Keeve III, “Southern Migrant Mixtape” (Nomadic Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, we speak with Vernon Keeve III about his book Southern Migrant Mixtape (Nomadic Press, 2018), a collection published by Nomadic Press. Memoir comes in many forms, be it poetry or ...

Lorena Turner, “The Michael Jacksons” (Little Moth Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During his lifetime, Michael Jackson became a global icon. Michael Jackson was beloved by millions; his journey began as he became a boy star with The Jackson Five and it culminated with his being ...

Nicole Myers Turner, "Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her nuanced case study of postemanciaption Virginia, Nicole Myers Turner, (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University) challenges assumptions regarding the intersection between ...

Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may be invisible. In Religion Around Billie Holida...

Abigail Perkiss, “Making Good Neighbors: Civil Rights, Liberalism and Integration in Postwar Philadelphia” (Cornell UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sitting in my home office this morning, I’ve periodically looked up from my computer screen and out the window to see who the dog is barking at. Sometimes it’s a young mother pushing a stroller, so...

Joshua M. Myers, "We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989 (NYU Press, 2019) is the first history of the 1989 Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the u...

Alisha Gaines, “Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does one show empathy towards someone across racial lines?  In her new book Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) Dr. Alisha Gaines ana...

Robert E. Gutsche Jr., “A Transplanted Chicago: Race, Place and the Press in Iowa City” (McFarland, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The city of Iowa City’s website promotes its “small-town hospitality” and its focus on “culture.” But a closer look at Iowa City, home to 70,000 and the University of Iowa, reveals a community tryi...

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "The Age of Phillis" (Wesleyan UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jennifer J. Davis speaks with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, about The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan UP, 2020), Jeffers’s latest collection of poems centere...

Bernard Fraga, “The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following a historic election, we return again to the question of turnout. Who turned out in large numbers to shift power in the House back to the Democrats? What we know about the past is that the...

Ian Haney Lopez, “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ian Haney Lopez is the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford UP 2014). He is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the...

Edward J. Robinson, "Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ" (U Tennessee Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ (University of Tennessee Press, 2019), Edward J. Robinson provides a comprehensive look at the church’s impr...

R. C. Romano and C. B. Potter, “Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past” (Rutgers UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018), edited by Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, is a collection of essays about Lin...

Luke E. Harlow, “Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Luke E. Harlow, Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) examines the role of religion, and more specifically, conservative evangelical Pr...

Tsedale Melaku, "You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What kind of discrimination do Black women face in the legal profession? Tsedale Melaku explores this question and more in her new book: You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gende...

Caitlin C. Rosenthal, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The familiar narrative of American business development begins in the industrial North, where paternalistic factory owners, committed to a kind of Protestant ethic, scaled up their operations into ...

David Williams, “I Freed Myself: African American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lincoln was very clear–at least in public–that the Civil War was not fought over slavery: it was, he said, for the preservation of the Union first and foremost. So it’s not surprising that when the...

Zerlina Maxwell, "The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide" (Hachette, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After working on two presidential campaigns (for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), MSNBC political analyst and SiriusXM host Zerlina Maxwell gained first-hand knowledge of everything liberals have...

Stefan M. Bradley, “Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The eight elite institutions that comprise the Ivy League, sometimes known as the Ancient Eight—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell—are American stalwarts that h...

Christine Knauer, “Let Us Fight as Free Men: Black Soldiers and Civil Rights” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent controversies over integrating the military have focused on issues of gender and sexuality. In the 1940s and 50s, however, the issue was racial integration. As Christine Knauer shows in her ...

François Clemmons, "Officer Clemmons: A Memoir" (Catapult, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Officer Clemmons: A Memoir (Catapult, 2020), François Clemmons tells the story of how he became the first ever African-American recurring character on a children’s television when he took on the...

Jonathan Shandell, “The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era” (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The role of the artist in the cause of Black freedom has been a hotly debated topic for generations now. Dr. Jonathan Shandell’s The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era (University...

Vershawn Young et al., “Other People’s English” (Teacher’s College Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In linguistics, we all happily and glibly affirm that there is no “better” or “worse” among languages (or dialects, or varieties), although we freely admit that people have irrational prejudices ab...

Greg Garrett, "A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his powerful new book, A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation (Oxford University Press, 2020), Greg Garrett brings his signature brand of theologically mo...

Sylvia Chan-Malik, “Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of Muslims in America has primarily been told through the experiences of men and often revolves around narratives of immigration. Sylvia Chan-Malik, Assistant Professor of American Studie...

Marc Myers “Why Jazz Happened” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did jazz take shape? Why does jazz have so many styles? Why do jazz songs get longer as the twentieth century proceeds? Marc Myers, in his fascinating book Why Jazz Happened (University of Cali...

Michael Goldfield, "The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The golden key to understanding the last 75 years of American political development, the eminent labor relations scholar Michael Goldfield argues, lies in the contests between labor and capital in ...

Andrew M. Busch, “City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Austin, Texas has a reputation as a vibrant, youthful capital city buoyed economically and culturally by the University of Texas. In City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justi...

Arica L. Coleman, “That the Blood Stay Pure” (Indiana UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Arica Coleman did not start out to write a legal history of “the one-drop rule,” but as she began exploring the relationship between African American and Native peoples of Virginia, she unraveled t...

Steven J. L. Taylor, "Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana" (SUNY Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

African Americans have a long history of emigration. In Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana, Steven J. L. Taylor explores the second wave of African American exiles or ...

Stefan M. Wheelock, “Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic” (U Virginia Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Dr. Stefan M. Wheelock analyses a little-discussed e...

N. Jeremi Duru, “Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL” (Oxford University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Each year, following the end of the NFL season, there is a blizzard of activity as teams with disappointing records fire their head coaches and look for the new leader who will turn things around. ...

A. de la Fuente and A. J. Gross, "Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020) tells the story of enslav...

Treva Lindsey, “Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C.” (U Illinois, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The New Negro Movement is typically seen as a Harlem-based project. Dr. Treva Lindsey’s important book, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C. (University of Illinois Press...

Kevin Quashie, “The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture” (Rutgers UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Musician James Brown is famous for his civil rights slogan, “Say it loud; I’m Black and I’m proud,” illustrating the argument that Kevin Quashie makes in his new book The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyo...

Robert T. Chase, "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert T. Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020). In the early twenti...

Matthew Harper, “The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the wake of the bloody Civil War, millions of slaves were emancipated. How did those freed slaves, along with African Americans freed before the Civil War, interpret this new post-war world? Dr....

Aram Goudsouzian, “Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear” (FSG, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I really didn’t know anything about the “Civil Rights Movement.” I knew who Martin Luther King was, and that he had been assassinated by white racists (I knew quite a...

Shana Redmond, "Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020), Shana Redmond explores the ways in which Paul Robeson, silenced by state repression in his lifetime, still sp...

Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the French capital on a map. Geography is, after all st...

Adam Henig, “Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Odyssey” (2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alex Haley’s 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family still stands as a memorable epic journey into the history of African Americans during the enslavement period and after. The 1977 televis...

Clifford Mason, "Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by Clifford Mason, celebrated actor, director, writer, and playwright, and autho...

Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of repression that were rooted in systemic racism an...

Ravi K. Perry, “Black Mayors, White Majorities: The Balancing Act of Racial Politics” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do black mayors face a different governing challenge than other mayors? Ravi K. Perry explores this question in his Black Mayors, White Majorities: The Balancing Act of Racial Politics (University ...

Monika Gosin, "The Racial Politics of Division: Interethnic Struggles For Legitimacy in Multicultural Miami" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over recent years, scholarship centering Afrolatinidad has pushed the bounds of the field towards greater forms of racial and ethnic understanding. Dr. Monika Gosin’s monograph, The Racial Politics...

Christina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, 2017) is a dramatic and vibrant story of a little-known Kentucky school, the Choctaw Academy. Christina Snyder, McCabe-...

Cindy Hooper, “Conflict: African American Women and the New Dilemma of Race and Gender Politics” (Praeger Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cindy Hooper is a veteran of various local, state, and national political campaigns. She is the founder of a national organization for African American women that is headquartered in Washington, D....

Marcia Chatelain, "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright, 2020) by Marcia Chatelain is a fascinating examination of the relationship between the fast-food industry, Black business owners, and the c...

Neil Roberts, “A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass” (UP of Kentucky, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ birth. It can hardly be said that scholars have neglected Douglass; indeed, he is one of the most written-about figures in American ...

Amy L. Wood, “Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940” (UNC Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Host Jonathan Judaken talks with author and professor Amy Wood about her book, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). W...

R. Farrugia and K. D. Hay, "Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay of Oakland University on their new book Women Rapping Revolution.(University of California P...

Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do schools empower but also potentially emasculate young black men? In his new book, Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools (University of Minnesota Press...

Keith Waters, “The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-1968” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“…when people were hearing us, they were hearing the avant-garde on the one hand, and they were hearing the history of jazz that led up to it on the other hand – because Miles was that history.” -H...

Aaron Kamugisha, "Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aaron Kamugisha reads CLR James and Sylvia Wynter to glean from them ways to navigate the “beyond” of coloniality. In his new book Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intel...

M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man is a milestone of American literature and the idea of invisibility has become a key way for understanding social marginalization. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisib...

Christina Greer, “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christina Greer is the author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2013). Greer is assistant professor of political science at Fordha...

Sherrow O. Pinder et al., "Black Political Thought: From David Walker to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Political Thought: From David Walker to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a nuanced and long-needed anthology interrogates the “never ending issue” of the unequal positioning ...

Keri Leigh Merrit and Matthew Hild, eds., “Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power” (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In their new edited volume Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), Keri Leigh Merritt and Matthew Hild provide an interdisciplinary approac...

Nathaniel Millett, “The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World” (UP of Florida, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is a very timely book, coming as it does in the midst of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 — the war that gave birth to the maroon community of Prospect Bluff, Florida. In his book The ...

Jill Strauss, "Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Race remains a potent and divisive force in our society. Whether it is the shooting of minority people by the police, the mass incarceration of people of color, or the recent KKK rallies that have ...

David García, “Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins (Duke University Press, 2017), David García reminds us that how culture is understood and interpreted not...

Julia H. Lee, “Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937” (NYU Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Julia H. Lee is the author of Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937 (New York University Press, 2011). Dr. Lee is an Assistant Prof...

Kabria Baumgartner, "In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America (NYU Press, 2019) is an intellectual and cultural history of the educational activism of African American women a...

Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Boston’s political culture is most known within the frame of antebellum political struggles over the institution of slavery. What about Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction era Black Bostonian po...

Susan D. Carle, “Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880-1915” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians tell stories, and stories have beginnings and ends. Most human eras, however, are not so neat. Their beginnings and ends tend to blend into one another. This is why historians are often ...

Lynn M. Thomas, "Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

By 2024, global sales of skin lighteners are projected to reach more than $30 billion. Despite the planetary scale of its use, skin lightening remains a controversial cosmetic practice. Lynn M. Tho...

Brian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople and activists – to piece together a comprehensive o...

Matthew L. Basso, “Meet Joe Copper: Maculinity and Race on Montana’s World War II Home Front” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, World War II is now called “The Good War,” as opposed to bad ones, I suppose, like Vietnam. Moreover, the Americans who fought in World War II are now called “The Greatest Gen...

Paige Glotzer, "How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paige Glotzer is the author of How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960, published by Columbia University Press in 2020. How the Suburbs Were ...

Lessie B. Branch, “Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America” (U Massachusetts Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America (University of  Massachusetts Press, 2018) takes as its point of departure and central preoccupation the notion ...

Simon P. Newman, “A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ask most educated people about the development of American slavery, and you’re likely to hear something about Virginia or, just maybe, South Carolina. In his far-reaching but concise and elegantly ...

Garrett Felber, "Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the post-war Black Freedom Movement. In his new book Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carcera...

Judith Weisenfeld, “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A wave of religious leaders in black communities in the early twentieth-century insisted that so-called Negroes were, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or a raceless children of God. ...

Robert Cassanello, “To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville” (University Press of Florida, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of the rise of Jim Crow in Jacksonville, Florida is in many ways illustrative of the challenges facing newly emancipated African Americans throughout the South with local officials erecti...

Edward Onaci, "Free The Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans' best-remaining hope for...

Kristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras” (U Georgia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Kansas-Missouri border holds a place of infamy in the history of American slavery as the chief battleground of the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the mid-nineteenth century. Kristen Epps, an associa...

W. Caleb McDaniel, “The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform” (LSU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How could members of a movement committed to cosmopolitanism accommodate nationalism? How could men and women committed to non-resistance reconcile themselves to politics when the authority of even...

Neil Roberts on How Ideas Become Books in Africana and AfroAm Studies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Where do good ideas come from? How does an idea go from creation to a research project? How is historical research done? And how does research find its way into a finished book? And what impact can...

Naomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she calls “engaged musicology.” Positioning herself within...

John K. Thornton, “A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820” (Cambridge UP, 2012). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thanks in no small part to John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University, the field of Atlantic history has emerged as one of the most exciting fields of historical research over the ...

H. Moore and J. Tracy, "No Fascist USA!" (City Lights, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

No Fascist USA!: The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Social Movements (City Lights Publishing, 2020) by Hilary Moore and James Tracy recounts the stories of fearless organize...

Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did prisons become a tool of racial inequality? Using historical data, Heather Schoenfeld’s new book Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicag...

Brian Harker, “Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on mu...

Joshua Bennett, "Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man" (Harvard UP, 2020)  from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Throughout US history, black people have been configured as sociolegal nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man (Harvard University Press, 2020)...

Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But who was Schomburg? In Diasporic Blackness: The L...

Sikivu Hutchinson, “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels” (Infidel Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does it seem like everyone in the atheist movement is white and male? Are African-American women less interested in secularism? In her book, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (Infide...

Scott Seider and Daren Graves, "Schooling for Critical Consciousness" (Harvard Education, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Scott Seider from Boston College and Dr. Daren Graves from Simmons University on their new book, Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Yo...

Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well as a free space for the black community. Despit...

Matthew W. Hughey, “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention. Those who benefit from this invention a...

Gilda R. Daniels, "Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Are we asleep at the (common)wheel? Civil rights attorney and law professor Gilda R. Daniels insists that contemporary voter ID laws, voter deception, voter purges, and disenfranchisement of felons...

J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Fifty years ago, the United States, and many other societies, experienced one of the most turbulent years of the century. In 1968, Americans were deeply divided. The Vietnam War was at its height, ...

Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, “The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America” (UNC Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jesus has inspired millions of people to both strive for social justice and commit horrific acts of violence. In the United States, Jesus has remained central in the construction of American identi...

Frank Wilderson III, "Afropessimism" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand the pervasiveness – and virulence – of anti-Black violence in the United State? Why and how is anti-Black racism different from other forms of racism? How does it permeate ...

Ian Rocksborough-Smith, “Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism From World War II Into the Cold War” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activism comes in many forms, be it political, educational, or social. Less often though, do people perceive historical activism in such conversations. Dr. Ian Rocksborough-Smith’s new book: Black ...

Carmen Kynard, “Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacies Studies” (SUNY Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You know you are not going to get the same old story about progressive literacies and education from Carmen Kynard, who ends the introduction to her book with a saying from her grandmother: “Whenev...

Bharat Malkani, "Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the connection between the movement for death penalty abolition and the anti-slavery movement? In Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition (Routledge, 2018), Bharat Malkani, Seni...

Kelley Fanto Deetz, “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine” (UP of Kentucky, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The concept of “Southern hospitality” began to take form in the late eighteenth century and became especially associated with Virginia’s grand plantations. This state was home to many of our foundi...

H. Paul Thompson Jr., “A Most Stirring and Significant Episode: Religion and the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Black Atlanta, 1865-1887” (NIU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The American Temperance Movement remains an interesting and important topic. Considering the various attitudes that influenced laws about alcohol sale and consumption of the past are often referred...

Nemata Blyden, "African Americans and Africa: a New History" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“What is Africa to me?”, African-American writer Countee Cullen asked in Color, his 1925 collection of poems. African Americans and Africa: A New History (Yale University Press, 2019) lays out the ...

Tameka Bradley Hobbs, “Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida” (UP of Florida, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The World War II era was a transformative period for the United States’ relationship to the rest of the world. Exporting liberal democracy was an important goal for the American government. Yet in ...

Keith Clark, “The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry” (Louisiana State UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do you do if you accompany a friend on her research trip to Boston University’s Gotlieb Archival Research Center and end up finding a treasure trove of letters, news articles, hand written not...

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...

Anna-Lisa Cox, “The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality” (PublicAffairs, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as  Anna-Lisa Cox’s points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: Ame...

Marc Mauer, “Race to Incarcerate” (New Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The American penitentiary model began as not merely a physical construct, but as a philosophical and religious one. Prisoners were to use their time in silence and isolation to contemplate their cr...

Kathryn H. Ross, "Black Was Not a Label" (Pronto, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathryn H. Ross has found a balance. Between past and present. Between self and ancestors. Between self-discovery and continuous growth. In her hybrid collection, Black Was Not a Label, Ross invite...

Hilary Green, “Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools In The Urban South, 1865-1890” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In cities ravaged by years of bloodshed and warfare, how did black populations, many formerly enslaved, help shape the new world that the Civil War left open for them to mold? In Dr. Hilary Green’s...

Monica R. Miller, “Religion and Hip Hop” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between music and religion is a site of increasing interest to scholars within Religious Studies. Monica Miller, Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Lehigh Univ...

Carl Suddler, "Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to inc...

Roger Biles, “Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harold Washington’s election as mayor of Chicago in 1983 sent a shockwave through the politics of America’s third largest city, one that reverberated for decades afterward. Yet as Roger Biles descr...

Alexis Wilson, “Not So Black and White” (Tree Spirit Publishing, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I think of the name “Billy Wilson” certain things come to mind immediately. I think of his sparkling career as director and choreographer of “Bubbling Brown Sugar” on Broadway. I am still stun...

Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2020...

Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could stop people and search them. Taking a...

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, “Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston” (UNC Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How were black women manumitted in the Old South, and how did they live their lives in freedom before the Civil War? Historian, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Associate Professor in the Department of Hi...

Brandon K. Winford, "John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights" (UP Kentucky, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Hervey Wheeler (1908–1978) was one of the civil rights movement's most influential leaders. In articulating a bold vision of regional prosperity grounded in full citizenship and economic power...

Marcus Rediker “The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom” (Viking, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If the moniker of the slave ship Amistad brings to mind images of Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, and Morgan Freeman you are likely not alone. The monumental success of Steven Spielberg’s cinemati...

Natasha J. Lightfoot, "Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation (Duke University Press, 2015), Natasha J. Lightfoot traces the ways Antiguans and Barbudans experienced freedom in the immedi...

Christopher W. Schmidt, “The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The sit-in movement that swept the Southern states in 1960 was one of the iconic moments of the post-World War II civil rights movement. Yet the images of students patiently sitting at “whites-only...

Henry Wiencek, “Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves” (FSG, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Louisiana Purchase was a perfect illustration of the challenges, yet seemingly boundless opportunities that slavery presented statesmen like Thomas Jefferson. Napoleon Bonaparte had been dealt ...

Forrest Stuart, "Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do young men use drill music and social media to gain power? In his new book, Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy (Princeton University Press, 2020), Forres...

Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic...

Andre Williams, “Dividing Lines: Social Class Anxiety and Postbellum Black Fiction” (University of Michigan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Andrei Williams‘ provocative new book on African American class divisions in Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow America is sure to spark spirited debate among those interested in how the interplay of...

Kenesha N. Grant, "The Great Migration and the Democratic Party" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kenesha N. Grant, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University, at the beginning of her new book, The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of ...

Sami Schalk, “Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do werewolves, enslaved women and immortal beings have in common? And how can they shed light on contemporary questions of ableism and police brutality? In Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, ...

Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, “Becoming Jimi Hendrix” (Da Capo, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After his incendiary performance at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix almost immediately went from obscure musician to pop superstar in America. But as Steven Roby and Brad...

Anne Heffernan, "Limpopo’s Legacy, Student Politics and Democracy in South Africa" (James Currey, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anne Heffernan's new book Limpopo’s Legacy, Student Politics and Democracy in South Africa (James Currey, 2019) is a thoroughly researched account of the Black Consciousness Movement, student activ...

Sandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press...

Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen, “Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop” (W.W. Norton, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The moral arguments in defense of slavery hinged on the claim that it was the best arrangement for all parties involved, especially the slaves. Thomas Jefferson, for example, argued that the differ...

Andre Brock, "Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Technology has been instrumental in allowing audiences to encounter expressions of culture to which they may have no direct connection. The popular commercial platforms like Twitter and Instagram m...

Charles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals–known as the “country-soul ...

Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, “Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

German military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz observed that many of the important variables in war exist in ‘clouds of great uncertainty’ which create disconnects and confusion that persist even aft...

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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

Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the complexities of black dance in the United State...

Vladimir Alexandrov, “The Black Russian” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, wh...

Isar P. Godreau, "Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico" (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, in addition to the rise ...

Le’Trice D. Donaldson, "Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920" (SIUP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020), Le’Trice D. Donaldson...

Avidit Acharya et al., “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Several weeks ago, we had Professor Lilliana Mason on the podcast talking about her book about the process of social sorting that has deepened divides between citizens by aligning race, religion, a...

Peter Benjaminson, “Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar” (Chicago Review Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who is Motown’s first real star? The answer, of course, is Mary Wells, singer of such classics as “My Guy,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” and “Two Love...

Kim T. Gallon, "Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (University of Illinois Press, 2020), Dr. Kim Gallon examines how Black newspaper editors and journalists creat...

Adam H. Domby, "The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory" (U Virginia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adam H. Domby, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Charleston, has written a rigorous analysis of American political memory as it connects to the Civil War and long shadow of the...

Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A book that strikes at the source of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts‘ Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery ...

Reiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement” (Lexington Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lexington Books, 2012), the second installment of his hip hop trilogy, Reiland Rabaka again dis...

Ashon T. Crawley, "The Lonely Letters" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Lonely Letters (Duke UP, 2020), A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy primarily because I always have it. I...

Christopher Tomlins, "In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1831, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and q...

John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is a transnational study that traces the persistenc...

Michael P. Jeffries, “Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the last year, this podcast has featured several authors who’ve examined the presidency of Barack Obama. John Sides, Daniel Kriess, and Enid Logan each wrote about the election campaign of the...

J. A. Ball and T. Burroughs, "A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X" (Black Classic Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting...

Mary Stanton, "Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930–1950" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mary Stanton's Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930–1950 (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first narrative history of the American communist movement in the South since Rob...

Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the P...

Andra Gillespie, “The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America” (NYU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Andra Gillespie is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2012). She is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University and...

Michael E. Sawyer, "Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X" (Pluto Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This episode is part of a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, corr...

Miriam J. Abelson, "Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American masculinity is being critiqued, questioned, and reinterpreted for a new era. In Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Miria...

Matthew Karp, “This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at The Helm of American Foreign Policy” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people know that slavery was foundational to the economic development of the United States in the antebellum period. Fewer people are aware that slavery was also important for American foreign...

Stephen G. Hall, “A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America” (UNC Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historian Stephen Hall passionately engages in the history of nineteenth-century African American intellectual life in his first monograph, A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historic...

Martha S. Jones, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power-and how it transformed America In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the r...

Katherine Franke, "Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Katherine Franke’s ambitious new book challenges Americans to face our collective responsibility for ongoing racial inequality. Rather than fall back on what Franke calls a “palliative history” tha...

Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as part of the Cold War International History Projec...

Richard W. Leeman and Bernard Duffy, “The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) is a compendium of 22 orations delivered by African Americans over a span of...

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge" (Simon and Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Simon and Schuster, 2017) is the powerful narrativ...

Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, "Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In their new book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (Princeton University Press, 2020), political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird explore the poli...

Lisa A. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The title of Lisa A. Lindsay’s book Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa (University of North Carolina Press, 2017),  invokes enduring family ties, as well as the con...

Stephen Caliendo and Charlton McIlwain, “Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns” (Temple University Press 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stephen Caliendo and Charlton McIlwain are the authors of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns (Temple University Press 2011). Caliendo is Professor of Political Scienc...

Brandon Mills, "The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brandon Mills is the author of The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020. The World Colonization Made exp...

Vincent Brown, "Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave tr...

Averell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Smith is a political consul...

Carla L. Peterson, “Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Digging up our roots seems to be the thing these days.  There are a host of genealogy resources available for anyone who cares to (re)discover their familial past.  Still, in the Americas people of...

Tony Bolden, "Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk" (UP of Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) by Tony Bolden, an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas, and a...

Jeff Forret, "William’s Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeff Forret is the author of William’s Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. William’s Gang explores the career of promine...

Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom” (U Penn Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Keisha N. Blain teaches African American and gender and women’s history at the University of Pittsburg. Her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (...

Preston Lauterbach, “The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll” (W. W. Norton, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Where does rock ‘n’ roll begin? In The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll (W. W. Norton, 2011), Preston Lauterbach makes a strong case for its beginnings in the backwoods and small-tow...

Erica Fretwell, "Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and the Aesthetics of Feeling (Duke University Press...

Paula C. Austin, "Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life (NYU Press, 2019) by Paula C. Austin, an Assistant Professor of history at Boston University, is not only a history of black y...

John Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and I...

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, “Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity” (Baylor UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Performance queen RuPaul once famously quipped that “we’re born naked; the rest is drag”–meaning everyone dons identity, performs one’s concept of self within our social networks, e.g., family, com...

Justin Gifford, "Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" (Lawrence Hill, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Lawrence Hill Books, 2020) is a remarkable biography that examines the notorious Black revolutionary meticulously within the context of his changi...

Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...

Greg Berman and Julian Adler, “Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The United States leads the world in incarceration. That’s a problem, especially the disproportionate impact of “mass incarceration” on low-income men of color. In their new book Start Here: A Road...

Yael Tamar Lewin, “Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins” (Wesleyan UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean for a contemporary scholar to be trusted with the unfinished autobiography of a dance legend? How does one ensure that the integrity of their research matches the depth of life ex...

Caroline H. Yang, "The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form (Stanford University Press, 2020) explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US l...

Tobie Stein, "Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Has can theatre confront racial inequality? In Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce (Routledge, 2020), Tobie S. Stein, Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater, Brookl...

Imani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public performances of patriotism. What does a national a...

Meredith Roman, “Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of US Racism, 1928-1937” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In December 1958, US Senator Hubert H. Humphery recalled that at some point during an eight hour meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier “tore off on a whole long lecture” that the Senat...

Quito J. Swan, "Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice" (UP of Florida, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida, 2020) by Quito Swan is an enchanting, magisterial, broadly researched monograph that illuminates th...

Kristen Hoerl, "Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements" (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on...

Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic” (U Georgia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined by their sexual attachment to white men, and th...

Sikivu Hutchinson, “Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars” (Infidel Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sikivu Hutchinson‘s book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (Infidel Books, 2011) is a brave examination of African American religious perspectives vis a vis progres...

D. T. Lawrence and E. J. Lawless, "When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics, and Community in Pinhook, Missouri" (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The town of Pinhook in Missouri was founded in the 1940s by southern Black farmers who were looking for land that they could purchase and own in the face of limited options. It was low land that wa...

Marcus P. Nevius, "City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856" (U Georgia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his newly released book City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 (University of Georgia Press, 2020), Professor Marcus P. Nevius (Assistant Professor of H...

Koritha Mitchell, ed., “Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted” by Frances E.W. Harper (Broadview Editions, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s nineteenth-century novel Iola Leroy has not always been considered a core text in the canon of African American literature. Indeed, throughout much of the twentieth c...

Catherine Higgs, “Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa” (Ohio University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With elegant and accessible prose, Catherine Higgs takes us on a journey in Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa (Ohio University Press, 2012). It is a fascinating voyage fueled b...

Anjali Vats, "The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans  (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Anjali Vats is an intricate and meticulously researched text on intellectual...

Spencer Dew, "The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his dazzling new book The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Spencer Dew treats his readers to a riveting and often counterintuitive ac...

Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The black social gospel–formulated and given voice by abolitionists and post-reconstruction Black men and women–took the United States by storm in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Black ...

Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life” (Verso Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Racism is a process by which people are segregated and discriminated against based on their race, and race is defined as a set of physical characteristics which certain groups share. Or is it? In R...

College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom: A Conversation with Eddie R. Cole from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Some of America's most pressing civil rights issues--desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech--have been closely intertwined with highe...

Diane Jones Allen, "Lost in the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Increased redevelopment, the dismantling of public housing, and increasing housing costs are forcing a shift in migration of lower income and transit dependent populations to the suburbs. These sub...

Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett shows in her new book Recaptured Africans: Surviving ...

Peggy Schwartz and Murray Schwartz, “The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus” (Yale UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For some time now I’ve been in spaces with dancers and dance scholars who lament the amount of available research on some of the black luminaries in our field. Sometimes the need for a particular p...

Clayborne Carson, "Malcolm X: The FBI File" (Skyhorse, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. We delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting the fundamentally mistake...

Great Books: John Callahan on Ellison's "Invisible Man" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ralph Waldo Ellison's masterpiece Invisible Man tells the story of an African-American man who insists on his visibility, agency, and humanity in a country dead-set on not seeing him. Barring him f...

Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018). This is the fourth book for Bass, who is dir...

Michele Elam, “The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics and Aesthetics in the New Millennium” (Stanford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“What are you?” The question can often comes out of nowhere One can be going about her quotidian activities, or she might have just finished a meeting at work. “What are you?” The question is disor...

Jill Watts, "The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt" (Grove Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When did Black Americans move from stalwart party of Lincoln Republicans to dedicated New Deal Democrats? How did a group of self-organized Black economists, lawyers, sociologists, and journalists ...

Nancy Appelbaum, "Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Chorographic Commission of Colombia, an ambitious geographical expedition, set out to define and map a nascent and still unstable republic. The commission’s purpo...

Julian Lim, “Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the railroad’s arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and ...

Donald Spivey, “‘If You Were Only White’: The Life of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige” (University of Missouri Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Of all American sports, baseball has contributed the greater number of folk heroes to the larger culture. Fictional characters of awe-inspiring ability, like the mighty Casey and Roy Hobbs, or quir...

Nicholas Guyatt, "Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation" (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? Racism is the usual answer. Yet Nicholas Guyatt argues in Bind Us Ap...

Paul J. Polgar, "Standard-Bearers of Equality: America’s First Abolition Movement" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul J. Polgar is the author of Standard-Bearers of Equality: America’s First Abolition Movement, published by University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Standard-Bearers of Equality tells the sto...

J. Michael Butler, “Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida 1960-1980” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians have long debated when the Black Freedom Struggle began and when it ended. Most point to the King years, 1955-1968. In his excellent book Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle i...

David Kirby, “Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Continuum, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom!”And so rock and roll was born. And so American culture changed forever. So says David Kirby in Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Continuum, 2009). “T...

Andre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner' (UP Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner by Andre E. Johnson, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at the University of Memphis, and Director...

AfroAm Studies Roundtable: Robert Greene II and Tyler D. Parry on the Becoming Historians from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today, instead of discussing a new book, I am convening a “New Books in African American Studies Roundtable” to talk with two historians early in their careers about their recent transitions from g...

Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. Dr. Marcus Rediker‘s new book, The Fearless Benj...

Peter Hoffer, “Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739” (Oxford, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739 (Oxford, 2010), Peter C. Hoffer offers a succinct and refreshing new look at the Stono slave rebellion of 1739, an event that has been ...

Saladin Ambar, "Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era" (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1964, Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic of debate that evening was the infamous phrase from Barry Goldwater's 1964 Republican Convention...

Rebecca E. Zietlow, "The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though the story of emancipation is well known in American history, the roles of many of the key figures involved in it are often overlooked. Among them is James Mitchell Ashley, the Ohio congressm...

Matthew Clavin, “Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all know that most runaway African-American slaves fled north in pursuit of freedom. Most, but not all. Some also fled to Pensacola, a city located in (of all places) the Deep South. In his exce...

Theresa Runstedtler, “Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the history of American sports, few athletes were as famous and hated in their day as Jack Johnson. The first African American boxing champion, Johnson was an astonishingly brash figure who flou...

Eithne Quinn, "A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the history of equal rights in Hollywood? In A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood (Columbia UP, 2019), Eithne Quinn, a senior lecturer in American Studies at...

Ellen Griffith Spears, "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Ellen Griffith Spears of the University of Alabama, author of Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) discusses t...

Kali Nicole Gross, “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

True crime is as popular as ever in our present moment. Both television and podcast series have gained critical praise and large audiences by exploring largely unknown individual crimes in depth an...

Reiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement” (Lexington Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cultural movements don’t exist in vacuums. Consciously or not, all movements borrow from, and sometimes reject, those that came before. In Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the ...

Graham R. G. Hodges, "Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day (Rutgers University Press, 2018) by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, George Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate U...

Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford Univer...

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, “Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the launch of the Dance Channel, I thought long and hard about what the first author interview would be. I felt that it was critically important that this channel begins with a rich conversatio...

Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974” (Michigan State UP, 2017). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, published by Michigan State University Press in...

Minkah Makalani, “In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939” (UNC Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Minkah Makalani is the author of a new intellectual history on the efforts of early twentieth century black radicals to organize an international movement, one that would address both racial and cl...

Great Books: Deborah Plant on Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.” This line from Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, captures what is at the heart of all great literature: the irr...

Douglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The concept of late-night basketball gained prominence in the late 1980s when G. Van Standifer founded Midnight Basketball League as a vehicle upon which citizens, businesses, and institutions can ...

Charlotte Pierce-Baker, “This Fragile Life: A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son” (Lawrence Hill Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When a mother listens to the beats of her own heart, where angst, fear and fortitude compete, and then beautifully weaves emotion into a story about her ongoing journey to support a bipolar son, th...

Orly Clergé, "The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the expansion of the Black American middle class and the increase in the number of Black immigrants among them since the Civil Rights period transformed the cultural landscape of New York C...

Paul Ortiz, “An African American and Latinx History of the United States” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Throughout many American classrooms, students learn how the United States was formed, and most importantly, the historical figures who helped produce the contemporary nation we occupy. All too ofte...

Erica R. Edwards, “Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Picture the familiar scene: the visiting pastor thanks the local pastor for granting him the use of his pulpit; he sends out the call (“Can I just speak with you this morning?”) and the congregatio...

Steve Suitts, "Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement" (NewSouth Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

School choice, widely touted as a system that would ensure underprivileged youth have an equal opportunity in education, has grown in popularity in the past fifteen years. The strategies and rhetor...

Sridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age” (HMH, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Sridhar Pappu, author of the book The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Pappu is The Male ...

Koritha Mitchell, “Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930” (University of Illinois Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Koritha Mitchell‘s Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2012) is, as described on the publisher’s webpage, “...

Erika Denise Edwards, "Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic" (U Alabama Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Argentina promotes itself as a country of European immigrants. This makes it an exception to other Latin American countries, which embrace a more mixed—African, Indian, European—heritage. Hiding in...

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, “Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the dual climaxes of the Brown vs. Board Supreme Cou...

Kelly Baker, “Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930” (University Press of Kansas, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If images of white robes, pointed hoods, and a burning cross represent racism and violence for you then you are not alone. But do they also evoke ideas of nationalism, Protestantism, and masculinit...

Peter Cole, "Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is a fascinating, densely researched account of dockworkers and their organized res...

Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi” (U of Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agricultural experiment in pursuit of economic subs...

David J. Leonard, “After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness” (SUNY Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The NBA Finals are under way, with the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Miami Heat. Network executives and the sports punditocracy are elated with the match-up. Ratings for Game 1 of the series wer...

Great Books: Emily Bernard on Larsen's "Passing" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nella Larsen's gripping 1929 novel Passing recounts the fateful encounter, first on a fancy Chicago hotel rooftop restaurant on a sweltering August afternoon and later in New York City, of two wome...

Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North? That is what historian Brian McCammack endeav...

Enid Logan, “At this Defining Moment: Barack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race” (NYU Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Enid Logan‘s At this Defining Moment: Barack Obama: Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race (NYU Press, 2011) examines the campaign and politics around the election of Barack Obama from...

adrienne maree brown, "Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good" (AK Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the introduction to Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (AK Press, 2019), adrienne maree brown defines pleasure activism as “the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiab...

Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Nation of Islam and other black nationalist groups are typically known for their male leaders. Men like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Malcolm X or Martin Delany and Marcus Garvey a...

Erin D. Chapman, “Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whoever states the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” grossly underestimates. So Erin D. Chapman shows in Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford Un...

Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, "Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy" (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, Professors of History at California State University—Fresno, discuss their co-authored book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confed...

Elizabeth McRae, “Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much attention has been drawn to the role of white women in the recent Alabama senate election and the earlier election of Donald J. Trump as president. Today’s racial and gender politics have long...

Kevin Whitehead, “Why Jazz? A Concise Guide” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin Whitehead‘s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone who loves jazz – and he does it in a qu...

Rupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents the forging of Garvey’s remarkable vision of pan...

Kay Wright Lewis, “A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World” (U. Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Howard University’s Kay Wright Lewis chronicles the...

Kathryn Lofton, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In December of 2011, Oprah Winfrey appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her new big plans and her inspirations for the future. Oprah replied, “For me at this particular time in my life I recog...

Blain Roberts, "Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging discussion that starts in the segregated beaut...

Corey D. Fields, “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans” (UC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is it about Black Republicans that makes them fodder for comedy? How do Black Republicans view their participation in their political group? Corey D. Fields answers these questions and more in...

Vershawn Young, “From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances” (Wayne State UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be black? In From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances (Wayne State University Press, 2011) editor Vershawn Ashanti Young and assistant editor Bridget Harris Ts...

Roberto Strongman, "Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou (Duke University Press, 2019), Roberto Strongman reveals the many non-heteronormative texts, practices and ...

Ashley D. Farmer, “Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Power was one of the most iconic movements of the twentieth century. Recent documentary treatments like The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 in 2011 and The Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revo...

Manning Marable, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” (Penguin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nearly 50 years after his death, Malcolm X remains a controversial figure. An 8th grade dropout (he ditched school when a white teacher told him it was unrealistic for a black kid to dream of being...

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, "Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean (Princeton University Press, 2019), historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof seamlessly ties togeth...

Patrick Breen, “The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did African-American slaves react to slavery? What factors, particularly religion, might shape those reactions, even making them violent? Patrick Breen, in his carefully researched and cogently...

Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating nar...

SpearIt, “American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam” (First Edition Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research has shown that mass incarceration in A...

Sowande Mustakeem, “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage” (U. Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most scholars and members of the public believe the process of enslavement was confined to the Western Hemispheric plantation or other locations of enslavement. Sowande Mustakeem’s award-winning Sl...

Elizabeth West, “African Spirituality in Black Women’s Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature, and Being” (Lexington Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth West has written an insightful study about the presence of African spirituality in the autobiographies, poetry, speeches and novels of African American women, ranging from Phylis Wheatley...

Andrea Boyles, "You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Black lives matter before death.” (p.132) In her powerful new book, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America (University of California Press, 2019...

Nikki M. Taylor, “Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio” (Ohio U. Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You may know Toni Morrison’s famed novel Beloved, but do you know much about the true story of the woman depicted in that story? You will know about the real story and more, by reading her biograph...

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, “Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color” (Rutgers UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One lesson that the ever-present trickster figure in African American folklore teaches is how to use signifying to protect one’s intimate self. A challenge of writing Dorothy West’s life is getting...

Catherine A. Stewart, "Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine A. Stewart is the author of Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016. Long Past Slavery examines t...

Stephane Robolin, “Grounds of Engagement: Apartheid-Era African American and South African Writing” (U. Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Writers have long created networks and connections by exchanging letters or writing back to one another in their poetry and fiction. Letters between Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Zo...

Mia Bay, “To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells” (Hill and Wang, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I can’t remember when I first saw one of those horrible photographs of a lynching, with crowds of white people, kids included, laughing and pointing at the mangled black body hanging from a tree. I...

K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...

Michelle Kuo, “Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship” (Random House, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don’t look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students devalue education. Media has portrayed the scenario ...

Vorris Nunley, “Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric” (Wayne State UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vorris Nunley‘s Keepin it Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Wayne State University Press, 2011), uses the black barbershop as a trope to discuss black talk within li...

Mark Katz, "Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In April 2014, a cohort of twenty-five hip hop artists assembled in Washington, D.C. for the first orientation meeting of a new cultural diplomacy program sponsored by the United States State Depar...

Melissa Milewski, “Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to the Civil Rights Era” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing on materials from archives in eight southern US states, Melissa Milewski’s Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to the C...

Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“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 years.” To Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis was an inspiration and...

Andrew R. M. Smith, "No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s ca...

David Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by David A. Goldstein, author of the book Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.) Goldstein explores the story of the Afric...

Keith Gilyard, “True to the Language Game: African American Discourse, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the preface to this book, Keith Gilyard describes his career as 30 years of roaming the areas of rhetoric, composition, sociolinguistics, creative writing, applied linguistics, education theory,...

Adrienne Petty, "Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Adrienne Petty discusses her book, Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2013), the black and white farmers in the South who...

Martha J. Cutter, “The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narratives, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1853” (U. Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery as a system of torture and bondage has fascinated the optical imagination of the transatlantic world for centuries. Scholars have examined various aspects of the visual culture that was sla...

Jerald Walker, “Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption” (Bantam Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jerald Walker‘s critical autobiography, Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption (Bantam, 2010), is a sheer pleasure to read. A book-length series of vignettes, reflections that ...

Great Books: Rich Blint on James Baldwin's "Another Country" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"If we - and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks [...] do not falter in our duty now, we may be able [...] to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our co...

James Forman Jr., “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). Mass incarceration and the carceral state ar...

Kitty Kelley, “Oprah: A Biography” (Three Rivers Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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: “Free speech rocks!” She was likely a little le...

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, "The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the...

Lisa M. Corrigan, “Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Prison P...

Daniel Sharfstein, “The Invisible line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White” (Penguin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel Sharfstein‘s The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2011) is the latest and perhaps best book in the growing genre of neo-pass...

Christopher Cameron, "Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism" (Northwestern UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019) by Christopher Cameron, an Associate Professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Cha...

Steve Sheinkin, “The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights” (Roaring Brook, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bun...

Lester K. Spence, “Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 influence in culture, fashion, film, and music is ubi...

John N. Singer, "Race, Sports, and Education: Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Male College Athletes" (Harvard Ed Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

College sport is a multi-billion dollar industry. The men and women who lead the teams in the most important conferences often make millions of dollars between their coaching salaries and endorseme...

Vincent J. Intondi, “African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement” (Stanford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015) tells the compelling story of those black acti...

Pierre W. Orelus, “The Agony of Masculinity: Race, Gender, and Education in the Age of the ‘New’ Racism and Patriarchy” (Peter Lang, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Orelus analyzes the “heartfelt stories of fifty men o...

Alys Eve Weinbaum, "The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History (Duke University Press, 2019), University of Washington Professor of English Alys Eve Weinbaum inv...

Anne C. Bailey, “The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contemporary conversations and debates over Confederate monuments underline how memory-making and the legacies of U.S. slavery and the Civil War remains raw and highly contested in public discourse...

Dave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World” (Haymarket Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are beautiful sports photos, and dramatic sports photos. There are sports photos that are funny, and others that are poignant. There are photos that capture athletic brilliance, and tenacity,...

Keri Leigh Merritt, "Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Keri Leigh Merritt discusses her book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and intersections of race, class, politics, and slavery in...

Sarah Haley, “No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent popular and scholarly interest has highlighted the complex and brutal system of mass incarceration in the United States. Much of this interest has focused on recent developments while other ...

Ron Christie, “Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new bookActing White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), former White House aide Ron Christie recounts the history of the pejorative term “acting white.” He tra...

Brandon R. Byrd, "The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti" (U Penn Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brandon R. Byrd is the author of The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2019. The Black Republic examines the multitude of...

Ben H. Winters, “Underground Airlines” (Mulholland Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Underground Airlines (Mulholland Books, 2016) is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we’d like to believe. In an alter...

Scott Brooks, “Black Men Can’t Shoot” (University of Chicago Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the NBA in the midst of a labor disagreement, players from the world’s premier basketball league are scattering in different directions to maintain their skills (and get paid). This past summe...

Talitha LeFlouria, "Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393