Author: admin

Breath and Contemporary Black Women Writers

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. Guest post by Aneeka Ayanna Henderson, author of Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of “Women’s History Week,” which preceded the establishment of March as Women’s History Month. It is an exciting time,… Continue Reading Breath and Contemporary Black Women Writers

An International Women’s Day Reading List

Happy International Women’s Day 2021! This year’s theme for IWD2021 is “Choose to Challenge:” A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively,… Continue Reading An International Women’s Day Reading List

The Private Life and Public Work of Nellie Y. McKay

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. The following preview excerpt is taken from the introduction to Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay by Shanna G. Benjamin, available April 2021 Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay traces twentieth-century Black literary history… Continue Reading The Private Life and Public Work of Nellie Y. McKay

The Book that Invented Modern Spirituality Celebrates its 75th Anniversary

Guest post by David J. Neumann, author of Finding God through Yoga: Paramahansa Yogananda and Modern American Religion in a Global Age Autobiography of a Yogi turns seventy-five this year. Paramahansa Yogananda’s famous life story was hailed by HarperSanFrancisco as one of the “100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century” more than two decades ago. Published in 1946, Autobiography… Continue Reading The Book that Invented Modern Spirituality Celebrates its 75th Anniversary

Gender, Family, and Kinship

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. The following excerpt is taken from Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century by Brianna Theobold In the nineteenth century, gender relationships in Crow society, as in many North American Indigenous cultures, are better described as complementary than… Continue Reading Gender, Family, and Kinship

Celebrating Women’s History and Women Historians

2021 marks the 100th anniversary of “Women’s History Week,” which led to the eventual establishment by annual presidential proclamation of March as Women’s History Month. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. During Women’s History… Continue Reading Celebrating Women’s History and Women Historians

Conventions and Black Print Culture

Closing out our blog posts for Black History Month 2021, the following excerpt by P. Gabrielle Foreman is taken from The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (available March 2021), edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson The Black press served not only as a conveyer of information but as a convener of audiences and ideas;… Continue Reading Conventions and Black Print Culture

Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: Coming Soon

Preorder any of the following titles and save 40% on all UNC Press books with discount code 01DAH40. Visit the sale page to browse more recommended titles in African American History, or view our full list of books in African American Studies. White Evangelical Racism:The Politics of Morality in Americaby Anthea Butler Available March 2021 | In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American… Continue Reading Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: Coming Soon

Letting the Stank Out: OutKast and the Rise of the Hip-Hop South

The following excerpt is taken from the introduction to Regina Bradley’s Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South While I do not suggest that hip-hop’s presence in the South is the sole marker of its contemporary existence, I do suggest that hip-hop is integral to updating the framework for reading the South’s modernity. Although southern hip-hop existed before OutKast,… Continue Reading Letting the Stank Out: OutKast and the Rise of the Hip-Hop South

Black in the Ivory

Guest post by Dr. Shardé M. Davis, editor of an anthology of #BlackintheIvory experiences coming 2022 from UNC Press. Also included below are details regarding an open call for stories to be considered for inclusion in the book; deadline is March 15, 2021. On June 6, 2020, I created the viral, Twitter hashtag #BlackintheIvory to document the overt and covert… Continue Reading Black in the Ivory

Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: New and Noteworthy

Save 40% on all UNC Press books with discount code 01DAH40. Visit the sale page to browse more recommended titles in African American History, or view our full list of books in African American Studies. Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop Southby Regina N. Bradley This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music,… Continue Reading Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: New and Noteworthy

Root Cause Analysis

The following excerpt is taken from Robin D.G Kelly’s new foreword to Black Marxism: The Making of a Radical Tradition, Revised and updated Third Edition by Cedric J. Robinson Racial capitalism has been the subject of a robust body of scholarship and has become virtually a field unto itself since the re-publication of Black Marxism. In fact, the term has become… Continue Reading Root Cause Analysis

The Nation of Islam, Caring for the Black Body, and Vaccine Hesitancy

Guest post (unrolled from a thread that appeared originally on Twitter) by Edward E. Curtis IV, author of Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975 The history of the Nation of Islam helps to explain why some U.S. African Americans do not want a foreign substance injected in their arms. As COVID Black and others have revealed, the horrible… Continue Reading The Nation of Islam, Caring for the Black Body, and Vaccine Hesitancy

Black Arts, Black Artists, and Black History

Guest post by James Smethurst, author of the forthcoming Behold the Land: The Black Arts Movement in the South. One fascinating and frightening aspect of our current moment in the United States is ways that history has been brought to the fore of contemporary political conversations and policy.  The heated, sweeping, and seemingly endless debates over the 1619 Project and… Continue Reading Black Arts, Black Artists, and Black History

“From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” Winner of the Inaugural ASALH Book Prize

The University of North Carolina Press heartily congratulates William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kristen Mullen for the inaugural Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s 2021 Book Prize recognition of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. Among its countless, notable accomplishments, the ASALA are the Founders of Black History Month.… Continue Reading “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” Winner of the Inaugural ASALH Book Prize

African American Presidential Cooks in Antebellum America

In light of Black History Month’s annual coinciding with Presidents Day, the following excerpt relevant to that reality is taken from The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller. “You know, the White House is really modeled after a plantation big house.” Chef… Continue Reading African American Presidential Cooks in Antebellum America

Celebrating Mary Church Terrell on Douglass Day 2021

Happy Douglass Day! This year, DouglassDay.org has dedicated part of the annual recognition of Frederick Douglass’s adopted February 14th birthday date weekend celebration to recognizing the life and work of Mary Church Terrell. Part of this celebratory weekend has included a virtual group effort to transcribe, read, and teach the papers of Terrell, a pioneering Black activist and leader, in… Continue Reading Celebrating Mary Church Terrell on Douglass Day 2021

The First Reconstruction

The following excerpt is taken from The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War by Van Gosse, now available from UNC Press. “We are Americans. We were born in no foreign clime.… We have not been brought up under the influence of other, strange, aristocratic, and uncongenial political relations. In this respect, we profess… Continue Reading The First Reconstruction

On the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture

Guest post by Waldo E. Martin, co-editor (with Patricia A. Sullivan) of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture Over two decades ago, when Pat Sullivan and I began talking with editor Lew Bateman about starting a new series at UNC Press that would publish transformative and engaging work in African American History and Culture, we… Continue Reading On the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture

The Philanthropists Behind Early Black Institutions

Guest post by Tamika Y. Nunley, author of At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. I remember the day I went into the archives at Howard University where librarians generously gave me access to a lovely rendering of Alethia Browning Tanner, a formerly enslaved woman who earned enough income to purchase her own freedom.… Continue Reading The Philanthropists Behind Early Black Institutions