Category: African American Studies

Hot Off The Press: March 2022

We’re publishing some great books this month! Read below to learn more about these exceptional titles. Don’t forget to enter code 01DAH40 at checkout for some savings! You can save 40% on ALL UNC Press print books and if your order totals $75 or more, the shipping is FREE! CITIZENS AND RULERS OF THE WORLD: THE AMERICAN CHILD AND THE… Continue Reading Hot Off The Press: March 2022

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Debbie Gershenowitz)

Happy Women’s History Month! In celebration of this historical month, we’ll be sharing reading lists curated by our staff featuring all authors who identify as women. Today we’re sharing a list curated by one of our Executive Editors Debbie Gershenowitz. Last week we shared a list curated by Andreina Fernandez, one of our Acquisitions Assistants. Click here to check out Andreina’s… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Debbie Gershenowitz)

What is the future of DNA ancestry testing in Brazil?

The following is a guest blog post by Sarah Abel, author of Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome. Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a… Continue Reading What is the future of DNA ancestry testing in Brazil?

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Andreina Fernandez)

Happy Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.” In… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Andreina Fernandez)

Class Interruptions: The Wrong Side of The Tracks

Happy Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.”… Continue Reading Class Interruptions: The Wrong Side of The Tracks

Black History Month 2022 Reading List: The Black International Experience

In celebration of Black History Month, we’ve chosen to publish a new reading list every week featuring only Black authors. The first reading list covered Black resistance, the second covered the Black American experience, the third covered biographies and this week’s reading list centers the Black international experience. While we may not all live in the same area of the world, many… Continue Reading Black History Month 2022 Reading List: The Black International Experience

Birth of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: A Historical Overview

The following is an excerpt from Edward Onaci’s Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. 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 liberation was the creation of a… Continue Reading Birth of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: A Historical Overview

Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

The following is an excerpt form Traci Parker’s Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s. In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built… Continue Reading Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Biographies

In celebration of Black History Month, we’ve chosen to publish a new reading list every week featuring only Black authors. The first reading list covered Black Resistance, the second covered the Black American experience and this week’s reading list centers biographies; telling the stories of a few vastly different lives lived under the Black identity umbrella. As mentioned in the… Continue Reading Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Biographies

Marked by the Past

The following is a guest blog post by Sarah Abel, author of Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome. Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a… Continue Reading Marked by the Past

Authors William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen featured on Reset Race

Recently, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, were featured on Reset Race’s podcast. Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was… Continue Reading Authors William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen featured on Reset Race

Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

The following is an excerpt from Tanisha C. Ford’s Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of… Continue Reading Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

Hot Off The Press: February 2022

We’re publishing some great books this month! Read below to learn more about these exceptional titles. Don’t forget to enter code 01DAH40 at checkout for some savings! You can save 40% on ALL UNC Press print books and if your order totals $75 or more, the shipping is FREE! Published: CLASS INTERRUPTIONS: INEQUALITY AND DIVISION IN AFRICAN DIASPORIC WOMEN’S FICTION… Continue Reading Hot Off The Press: February 2022

Black History Month 2022 Reading List: The Black American Experience

Earlier this month, we published the first of our weekly Black History Month reading lists, focused on Black Resistance. This week’s reading list centers the Black American experience and it consists of books written by black authors who touch on a few of the various and infinite lived occurrences we share as Black people in America. We are not a… Continue Reading Black History Month 2022 Reading List: The Black American Experience

Left of Black web series featuring award-winning author and historian Tanisha C. Ford

In 2016, Tanisha C. Ford, author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul was featured on John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute’s Left of Black web series. Left of Black is a web series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars created and hosted by James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Mark Anthony Neal. In this… Continue Reading Left of Black web series featuring award-winning author and historian Tanisha C. Ford

How Searching for Chex Mix during the Pandemic Heightened my Appreciation for Food Studies

The following is a guest blog post from Jennifer Jensen Wallach, author of Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America. Jennifer Jensen Wallach’s nuanced history of black foodways across the twentieth century challenges traditional narratives of “soul food” as a singular style of historical African American cuisine. Wallach investigates the experiences and diverse convictions… Continue Reading How Searching for Chex Mix during the Pandemic Heightened my Appreciation for Food Studies

Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Black Resistance

As you may already now, February is Black History Month. The history of black people should be celebrated at all times, but in February, we shine an extra special light on it. Black History Month began as Negro History Week in February 1926, created by historian Carter G. Woodson. In 1976, the celebration was expanded to a month. We’ll be… Continue Reading Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Black Resistance

Critical Book Spotlight: Dr. Robert Chase

Reblogged with permission from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice Newsletter Robert T. Chase is associate professor of history at Stony Brook University, State University of New York (SUNY). He is the author of We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC, 2020). He is also the editor of Caging… Continue Reading Critical Book Spotlight: Dr. Robert Chase

Author Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.’s Talk With the U.S. National Archives

Last month, the U.S. National Archives hosted a talk with historian Alaina E. Roberts and Warren Eugene Milteer Jr., author of Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South. On the eve of the Civil War, most people of color in the United States toiled in bondage. Yet nearly half a million of these individuals, including over 250,000 in the South,… Continue Reading Author Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.’s Talk With the U.S. National Archives

How Martin Luther King Jr. Mastered the Masters

The following is a guest blog post from Lane Demas, author of Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf. This groundbreaking history of African Americans and golf explores the role of race, class, and public space in golf course development, the stories of individual black golfers during the age of segregation, the legal battle to integrate public golf… Continue Reading How Martin Luther King Jr. Mastered the Masters