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
Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017)
The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of repression…
- New Books in African American Studies
Christina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Keri Leigh Merrit and Matthew Hild, eds., “Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power” (UP of Florida, 2018)
In their new edited volume Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), Keri Leigh Merritt and Matthew…
- New Books in African American Studies
David García, “Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins” (Duke UP, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston” (UNC Press, 2018)
Boston’s political culture is most known within the frame of antebellum political struggles over the institution of slavery. What about Reconstruction and…
- New Books in African American Studies
Brian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018)
Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople and activists…
- New Books in African American Studies
Lessie B. Branch, “Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America” (U Massachusetts Press, 2018)
Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) takes as its point of departure…
- New Books in African American Studies
Judith Weisenfeld, “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration” (NYU Press, 2017)
A wave of religious leaders in black communities in the early twentieth-century insisted that so-called Negroes were, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic…
- New Books in African American Studies
Kristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Naomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018)
Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well as a free…
- New Books in African American Studies
J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968” (Oxford UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Ian Rocksborough-Smith, “Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism From World War II Into the Cold War” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
Activism comes in many forms, be it political, educational, or social. Less often though, do people perceive historical activism in such conversations. Dr. Ian…
- New Books in African American Studies
Kelley Fanto Deetz, “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine” (UP of Kentucky, 2017)
The concept of “Southern hospitality” began to take form in the late eighteenth century and became especially associated with Virginia’s grand plantations…
- New Books in African American Studies
Tameka Bradley Hobbs, “Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida” (UP of Florida, 2015)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Anna-Lisa Cox, “The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality” (PublicAffairs, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Hilary Green, “Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools In The Urban South, 1865-1890” (Fordham UP, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Roger Biles, “Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Martha S. Jones, “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
The contemporary moment has brought to the forefront the question of what constitutes an American citizen. The legal question in popular understanding stems…
- New Books in African American Studies
Christopher W. Schmidt, “The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Sami Schalk, “Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction” (Duke UP, 2018)
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?…
- New Books in African American Studies
Sandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Charles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018)
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Avidit Acharya et al., “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics” (Princeton UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” (The New Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is a…
- New Books in African American Studies
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Matthew Karp, “This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at The Helm of American Foreign Policy” (Harvard UP, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Lisa A. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey” (UNC Press, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Averell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic” (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom” (U Penn Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
John Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Greg Berman and Julian Adler, “Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (The New Press, 2018)
The United States leads the world in incarceration. That’s a problem, especially the disproportionate impact of “mass incarceration” on low-income men of…
- New Books in African American Studies
Imani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined by their…
- New Books in African American Studies
Koritha Mitchell, ed., “Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted” by Frances E.W. Harper (Broadview Editions, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel” (Yale UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade” (UNC Press, 2017)
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 Books in African American Studies
Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Julian Lim, “Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
J. Michael Butler, “Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida 1960-1980” (UNC Press, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017)
In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. Dr. Marcus…
- New Books in African American Studies
Matthew Clavin, “Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers” (Harvard UP, 2015)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Kali Nicole Gross, “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso” (Oxford UP, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974” (Michigan State UP, 2017).
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Douglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Paul Ortiz, “An African American and Latinx History of the United States” (Beacon Press, 2017)
Throughout many American classrooms, students learn how the United States was formed, and most importantly, the historical figures who helped produce the…
- New Books in African American Studies
Sridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age” (HMH, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, “Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War” (UNC Press, 2016)
Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the dual…
- New Books in African American Studies
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi” (U of Georgia Press, 2018)
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agricultural…
- New Books in African American Studies
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017)
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…
- New Books in African American Studies
Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam” (UNC Press, 2017)
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…