New Books In African American Studies

Nikki Lane's The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)Politics of Respectability (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) enters as a corrective to the tendency to trivialize and (mis)appropriate African American language practices. The word ratchet has entered into a wider (whiter) American discourse the same way that many words in African American English have--through hip-hop and social media. Generally, ratchet refers to behaviors and cultural expressions of Black people that sit outside of normative, middle-class respectable codes of conduct. Ratchet can function both as a tool for critiquing bad Black behavior, and as a tool for resisting the notion that there are such things as "good" and "bad" behavior in the first place. This book takes seriously the way ratchet operates in the everyday lives of middle-class and upwardly mobile Black Queer women in Washington, DC who, because of their sexuality, are situated outside of the norms of (Black) respectability. The book introduces the conc

The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which granted women the right to vote nationwide, was the culmination of a long and oftentimes contentious campaign that had its origins in the beginnings of the nation itself. In American Women’s Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote, 1776-1965 (Library of America, 2020) Susan Ware provides readers with a sampling of the letters, articles, speeches, and other contemporary documents that reflect both the ideas of the movement and the arguments deployed against it. Her selections demonstrate how the battle of women’s suffrage was itself a part of a broader campaign for women’s rights in the early 19th century. Though it was galvanized by the activism of women from the abolitionist movement, the solidarity born of common oppression was shattered after the Civil War, when many suffragists expressed frustration with their exclusion from the voting rights being granted to Blacks. While a corps of dedicated activis

One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes readers on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. In Black Boy Out of Time: A Memoir (Little a, 2021), Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them. Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Hari Ziyad's vital memoir is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. It offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms. It looks back in tenderness as well as justified rage, forces us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminates the possibilities for the future. Dr. Christina Gessler is a historian of women, gender, and se

How do race and sexuality intersect in the American sitcom? In The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom (Indiana University Press, 2021),  Alfred L Martin, an assistant professor of communication studies at The University of Iowa, explores the production and reception of Black-cast sitcoms, along with a detailed analysis of the representations of gay men within this genre. At the centre of the book is a theorisation of the generic closet, both as a way to explain the absence of nuanced and complex representations of Black gay men on screen, and to account for the limited, decentred, and peripheral place offered to Black gay men in the Black-cast sitcom. Offering detailed engagement with the history and political economy of television, along with insights into writers’ rooms, production decisions, and audience responses, the book is essential reading across humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding contemporary culture. Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fel

Welcome to New Books in African American Studies, a channel on the New Books Network. I am your host, Adam McNeil. On today’s podcast, I am interviewing Dr. Jarvis R. Givens, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Suzanne Young Murray Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Dr. Givens joins us to discuss Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, published by our friends at Harvard University Press in 2021. In our discussion we chopped it up about Carter G. Woodson, Black educational history, the origin story behind "fugitive pedagogy" as a term, his journey from grad school at Berkeley, to his post at Harvard, and much much more. Enjoy the conversation family! Adam McNeil is a third year Ph.D. in History student at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingca

Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research. James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers Afri

Fatima Shaik's book Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood (Historic New Orleans Collections, 2021) tells the story of the Sociâetâe d'Economie et d'Assistance Mutuelle, a New Orleans mutual aid society founded by free men of color in 1836. The group was one of the most important multiethnic, intellectual communities in the US South: educators, world-traveling merchants, soldiers, tradesmen, and poets who rejected racism and colorism to fight for suffrage and education rights for all. The author drew on the meeting minutes of the Sociâetâe d'Economie as well as census and civil records, newspapers, and numerous archival sources to write a narrative stretching from the Haitian Revolution through the early jazz age. Adam McNeil is a third year Ph.D. in History student at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

On October 2nd, 1977, Glenn Burke, outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, made history without even swinging a bat. When his teammate Dusty Baker hit a historic home run, Glenn enthusiastically congratulated him with the first ever high five. But Glenn also made history in another way--he was the first openly gay MLB player. While he did not come out publicly until after his playing days were over, Glenn's sexuality was known to his teammates, family, and friends. His MLB career would be cut short after only three years, but his legacy and impact on the athletic and LGBTQIA+ community would resonate for years to come. New York Times bestselling author Andrew Maraniss tells the story of Glenn Burke: from his childhood growing up in Oakland, his journey to the MLB and the World Series, the joy in discovering who he really was, to more difficult times: facing injury, addiction, and the AIDS epidemic. Packed with black-and-white photographs and thoroughly researched, never-before-seen details about Glenn's life,

The capital city of a nation founded on the premise of liberty, nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., was both an entrepot of urban slavery and the target of abolitionist ferment. The growing slave trade and the enactment of Black codes placed the city's Black women within the rigid confines of a social hierarchy ordered by race and gender. At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. (UNC Press, 2021) reveals how these women--enslaved, fugitive, and free--imagined new identities and lives beyond the oppressive restrictions intended to prevent them from ever experiencing liberty, self-respect, and power. Consulting newspapers, government documents, letters, abolitionist records, legislation, and memoirs, Tamika Y. Nunley traces how Black women navigated social and legal proscriptions to develop their own ideas about liberty as they escaped from slavery, initiated freedom suits, created entrepreneurial economies, pursued education, and participated in political work.

Owed (Penguin, 2020) is the second collection of poems by Dr. Joshua Bennett, poet, professor, and artist. This volume is a wide-ranging, celebratory book focused on what Bennett calls "the Black quotidian," including the poetry of the barbershop, plastic slip-covers on couches, and the benign struggle between a father and a son over a pair of long johns. Throughout the book, Bennett's attention to detail and gift for both sound and sense are on dazzling display. In this conversation we discuss Owed, as well as Bennett's evolving relationship to spirituality, his process of learning to write out loud through poetry slams, and his experience of being a new father. Bennett is also the author of the poetry volume The Sobbing School, the monograph Being Property Once Myself, and the upcoming Spoken Word: A Cultural History. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more abou

What is the story of race in American fiction? In Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2020), Richard Jean So, an assistant professor of English in the Department of English at McGill University, uses computational and quantitative methods, alongside close textual analysis, to demonstrate the institutional whiteness of the US publishing industry. Even as the rise of multiculturalism has been celebrated in American fiction, So shows how publishing houses, reviewers, prize givers, and audiences still focused on a minority of Minority authors, with little evidence of change during the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, although as the struggle for recognition seemed to be won within universities, the literary world continued to exclude authors of colour. In addition, the book engages with, and draws inspiration from, the work and career of Toni Morrison, offering findings that will engage across both the humanities and social sciences

Dr. Brian K. Mitchell describes Reconstruction as the most misunderstood period in American history. In the Jim Crow era, there was a concerted effort to reverse the achievements of African Americans. White supremacists also removed the history of figures such as Louisiana’s Oscar Dunn, the first Lieutenant Governor and acting governor, from the official narrative. Since the second grade, when he learned he was related to Oscar Dunn, Mitchell has been pushing against this historical amnesia. Mitchell’s graphic history Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana was published by The Historic New Orleans Collection in 2021. He worked on Monumental with Nick Weldon, an associate editor at The Historic New Orleans Collection. Barrington S. Edwards of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design illustrated the book. Dr. Brian K. Mitchell is an assistant professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and an associate faculty member at the Anderson Institute on Race and

Since President Nixon coined the phrase, the "War on Drugs" has presented an important change in how people view and discuss criminal justice practices and drug laws. The term evokes images of militarization, punishment, and violence, as well as combat and the potential for victory. It is no surprise then that questions such as whether the "War on Drugs" has "failed" or "can be won" have animated mass media and public debate for the past 40 years. Through analysis of 30 years of newspaper content, Debating the Drug War: Race, Politics, and Media in the War on Drugs Debate (Routledge, 2021) examines the social and cultural contours of this heated debate and explores how proponents and critics of the controversial social issues of drug policy and incarceration frame their arguments in mass media. Additionally, it looks at the contemporary public debate on the "War on Drugs" through an analysis of readers' comments drawn from the comments sections of online news articles. Through a discussion of the findings and

Imagine a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco, hat in hand, straining to remain astride. Is the rider in your mind's eye white? Is the person male? Popular imaginings and high level, televised, professional rodeo circuits have created a stereotyped image of who rodeo is by and for, but it is far too limited an image, and one that does not reflect reality. In Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Race, Gender, and Identity in the American Rodeo (University Press of Kansas, 2020), Dr. Elyssa Ford, an associate professor of history at Northwest Missouri State University, paints a very different image of rodeo than what Western myth would have one believe. Ford argues that rodeo has, from its creation, both a vehicle for rebellion and a place of refuge for groups of people told they didn't belong in the American West, let alone in Western rodeo. From Hawaiian ranching culture to Black and gay rodeo, men and women have used professional riding as a powerful expression of self in a nation that has often tried to deny

The election of Barack Obama propelled the idea of a post-racial United States, or that the country had moved beyond race as a defining feature of social difference and beyond racism as an everyday reality.  Dr. Danielle Fuentes Morgan examines the ways in which African American comedians and cultural producers took aim at such claims through the lens of satire. In her book, Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty First Century (University of Illinois Press, 2020), Morgan demonstrates and argues for satire’s capacity for social justice through its expression of Black interiority and individuality that troubles simplistic renderings of Black people. Morgan examines texts such as Insecure, Get Out, and comedy by Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle, to show how African American satire fulfills or stymies possibilities for liberation. In expressing Black interiority, satire not only provokes revolutionary laughter but aids in African American psychic and physical survival. During the interview

The Community Relations Service (CRS) came into being alongside the Voting Rights Act—as part of the Act itself. And this organization was integrated into the Voting Rights Act in 1964 because President Lyndon Johnson wanted it to be included in that landmark legislation, in part because Johnson, as an adept politician and negotiator, saw the importance of establishing a means for mediation and negotiation on the local level in many places throughout the United States. The initial portfolio of the CRS was focused solely on issues around race and racial disputes, though it has since been formally extended to include issues around ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. The CRS is housed in the Department of Justice, but operates as an independent entity, and does not work as part of the FBI or the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. Grande Lum, who is currently provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Menlo College, had served as the Director of the CRS from 2012-2016, and he ha

Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas,  and famed ethnographer of the Winnebago. Yet little is known about Radin's life. A leftist who was persecuted by the FBI and who lived for several years outside of the United States, and a bohemian who couldn't keep an academic job, there are many chapters in Radin's life which have not been told.  In Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race (Michigan State University Press, 2020), Jack Glazier tells the story of Radin's work at Fisk University in the late 1920s. During his three-year appointment, he and graduate student Andrew Polk Watson collected autobiographies and religious conversion narratives from elderly African Americans. That innovative, subject-centered research complemented like-minded scholarship by African American historians reacting against the disparaging portrayals of black people by white historians. In this book, Glazier descri

Political theorists Melvin Rogers and Jack “Chip” Turner have produced a truly magisterial edited volume centering the work by African American thinkers over the past centuries. With thirty contributed chapters, ranging across time, place, and person, this Collected History opens up the dialogue among theorists, writers, students, and scholars to explore the work that has often been considered vital to understanding African American political thought specifically, and American political thought in general. As the authors note in their introduction, they intentionally chose to focus each chapter on an individual and that individual’s work as a thinker, moving away from other approaches that often pull together thinkers and activists under broad topics or approaches. African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press, 2021) is both a reference, providing insight into one or more African American thinkers, and also an education, since the depth and span of the included work are

Today I talked to Kali Nicole Gross about her new book (co-authored with Daina Ramey Berry) A Black Women's History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2020). This episode covers a litany of instances in which black women have shown remarkable courage and resiliency. Yes, the episode starts with Meghan Markle, Harry, their son Archie, and how the Royals are emblematic of British society’s troubled history with racism. But the episode also covers Ida B. Wells campaigning against black suppression after the Civil War in Memphis; how the Great Migration was spurred in no small part by black domestic servants being subject to rape in the households where they served; and how Anita Hill and Pauli Murray are among a long list of black heroines who had to battle both racism and sexism at the hands of black leaders. From “Jane Crow” to the fact that the Statue of Liberty was meant to celebrate the abolitionist cause, the episode is full of surprises. Kali Nicole Gross is Acting Professor of African American Studies a

The civil rights movement was among the most important historical developments of the twentieth century and one of the most remarkable mass movements in American history. Not only did it decisively change the legal and political status of African Americans, but it prefigured as well the moral premises and methods of struggle for other historically oppressed groups seeking equal standing in American society. And, yet, despite a vague, sometimes begrudging recognition of its immense import, more often than not the movement has been misrepresented and misunderstood. For the general public, a singular moment, frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial, sums up much of what Americans know about that remarkable decade of struggle. In The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights (Oxford UP, 2021), Thomas C. Holt provides an informed and nuanced understanding of the origins, character, and objectives of the mid-twentieth-century freedom struggle, privileging the aspirations and initiatives of the ordinary