Shows / New Books in African American Studies
New Books in African American Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in African American Studies
David Cunningham on Contesting Confederate Monuments (JP)
David Cunningham joins John to speak about his pathbreaking article about visiting each of the 113 communities that removed or relocated Confederate symbols…
- New Books in African American Studies
Mollie Barnes, "Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902" (U South Carolina Press, 2026)
In Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902 (U South Carolina Press, 2026), Dr. Mollie Barnes studies…
- New Books in African American Studies
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)
The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only…
- New Books in African American Studies
On The State of Black Men's Studies and Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship
Wide ranging interview with Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II, Professor and Department Chair of Communication Studies, the University of Miami. Interview explores Dr…
- New Books in African American Studies
Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)
From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s…
- New Books in African American Studies
Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)
In Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026), Gary Hoover asks the reader a simple…
- New Books in African American Studies
Ashley Rose Young, "Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans" (Oxford UP, 2025)
For much of the Crescent City's history, days began with the cries of roaming street vendors and the percussive thwack of butchers' meat cleavers echoing out…
- New Books in African American Studies
Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in…
- New Books in African American Studies
Michael E. Sawyer, "The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black" (Temple UP, 2026)
In The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black (Temple University Press, 2026), Michael E. Sawyer presents a bold work of speculative theory and philosophy that…
- New Books in African American Studies
The Instigators
Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. In The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential…
- New Books in African American Studies
David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)
A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and playWhen outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he…
- New Books in African American Studies
Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)
In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)
Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Breaux…
- New Books in African American Studies
James O'Neil Spady, "Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair" (UNC Press, 2026)
In 1822, Black Charlestonians attempted to overthrow slavery. They were exposed before they could strike, and many were tried and executed in what has come to…
- New Books in African American Studies
Mary T. Freeman, "Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Mary Freeman, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Abolitionists and the Politics of…
- New Books in African American Studies
Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Since the late nineteenth century, the US federal government has enjoyed exclusive authority to decide whether someone has the ability to enter and stay in US…
- New Books in African American Studies
Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)
“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days…
- New Books in African American Studies
Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)
Historian Heather Ann Thompson’s Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026) recounts the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)
Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim…
- New Books in African American Studies
Fabio Rojas, "From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline" (JHU Press, 2010)
The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential political force…
- New Books in African American Studies
Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)
Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful…
- New Books in African American Studies
Wil Haygood, "The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home" (Knopf, 2026)
Award-winning author Wil Haygood joins Michael Stauch to discuss The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (Knopf, 2026) his new book on…
- New Books in African American Studies
Samiha Rahman, "Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care" (NYU Press, 2026)
Samiha Rahman’s Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care (New York University Press, 2026) follows three generations…
- New Books in African American Studies
Terror, Hope, & Exodus: The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman
May 5, 2026—In March 1880, an extraordinary American traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before a Senate committee investigating the exodus of formerly…
- New Books in African American Studies
Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia
Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black…
- New Books in African American Studies
Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)
We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Martin Luther…
- New Books in African American Studies
Benjamin Y. Fong and Paul Prescod, "Rustin's Challenge" (2026)
There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today…
- New Books in African American Studies
Alice Echols, "Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic" (Oxford UP, 2026)
A rich history of cross-racial coalitions and alliances of the Sixties' freedom movement, acclaimed historian Alice Echols's Black Power, White Heat reshapes…
- New Books in African American Studies
Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)
In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a…
- New Books in African American Studies
The Lost World of African American Cantors 1915–1953
Histories of Black-Jewish cultural interaction often focus on how Jews adopted and adapted Black vernacular music—ragtime, jazz, swing, R&B, blues—as…
- New Books in African American Studies
Emely Rumble, "Bibliotherapy in The Bronx" (Row House, 2025)
Bibliotherapy in The Bronx (Row House, 2025) by Emely Rumble, LCSW, is a groundbreaking exploration of the healing power of literature in the lives of…
- New Books in African American Studies
Rawlston Williams, "The Caribbean Cookbook" (Phaidon Press, 2026)
An exploration of Caribbean cuisine and culinary history, featuring more than 380 authentic home cooking recipes from across the region Caribbean cuisine…
- New Books in African American Studies
Voices from a Century of Struggle: Writings of the Jim Crow Era
Tuesday, April 7, 2026—Confronting disenfranchisement, legal segregation, and terrorist violence in the aftermath of the Civil War, Black Americans challenged…
- New Books in African American Studies
Cedric de Leon, "Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity" (U California Press, 2025)
Our guest today is Cedric de Leon, author of Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (U California Press, 2025). In this…
- New Books in African American Studies
Michael W. Tuck, "The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World" (Brill, 2026)
In his new book, The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (Brill, 2026) historian Dr. Michael W…
- New Books in African American Studies
Danielle Bainbridge, "Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive" (NYU Press, 2026)
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive (NYU Press, 2026) is a bold and incisive reconsideration of the relationship between…
- New Books in African American Studies
Tyesha Maddox, "A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) examines the significance of Caribbean…
- New Books in African American Studies
Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson
Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century? A landmark book—the first complete publication of…
- New Books in African American Studies
Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In Olfactory Worldmaking (University of Minnesota Press, 2026)…
- New Books in African American Studies
Katharine Gerbner, "Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2025)
In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In…
New Books in African American StudiesProlepsis
In this episode of High Theory, Gloria Fisk talks to Kim about Prolepsis. Defined by Gerard Genette in the 1970s, prolepsis is a flash forward, the opposite of…
- New Books in African American Studies
Lisa Nakamura, "The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet (U Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Lisa Nakamura challenges the widespread myth that the internet…
- New Books in African American Studies
Antwain K. Hunter, "A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865" (UNC Press, 2025)
Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865 (UNC Press, 2025)…
- New Books in African American Studies
Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)
On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in the halls…
- New Books in African American Studies
Jessica Ann Levy, "Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics, (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), traces the rise of Black empowerment…
- New Books in African American Studies
Austin McCoy, "Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made" (Atria/One Signal, 2026)
For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they changed the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North" (FSG Press, 2025)
In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Selina Nwulu, "Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures" (Chatto & Windus, 2025)
Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Globally, Black people are among the most affected by the climate crisis, despite…
- New Books in African American Studies
Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)
An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound impact as a…
- New Books in African American Studies
Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
A provocative new history of modern black liberalism Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) offers a…
- New Books in African American Studies
Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán, "Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings" (NYU Press, 2025)
Detroit seemed to experience an explosive rebirth following its bankruptcy, the largest in US municipal history. It was as if the slate had been wiped clean…
- New Books in African American Studies
Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)
Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice, and…
- New Books in African American Studies
Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)
During the American Civil War, clothing became central to the ways people waged war and experienced its cost. Through the clothes they made, wore, mended…
- New Books in African American Studies
Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
What happened to freedom singing after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination? Stephen Stacks considers this question in The Resounding Revolution: Freedom…
- New Books in African American Studies
John Drabinski, "So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
What happens if we turn to James Baldwin, not just for the amazing quotations and excellent photos, but as a critical theorist? What if we read his nonfiction…
- New Books in African American Studies
Brian Hallstoos, "Sol Butler: An Olympian's Odyssey through Jim Crow America" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
A superstar in both football and track and field Sol Butler pioneered the parlaying of sports fame into business prosperity. In Sol Butler: An Olympian's…
- New Books in African American Studies
Cassandra Shepard, "Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (U Illinois Press, 2026) is the new…
- New Books in African American Studies
Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)
In this masterful, groundbreaking work Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026)…
- New Books in African American Studies
Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the most…
- New Books in African American Studies
Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)
Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025) the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer’s personal relationships…