Category: Sociology

February 10, 2016

Excerpt: The Wilmington Ten, by Kenneth Robert Janken

The case of the Wilmington Ten emerged out of the events of February 1971. In an effort to lay blame for the violence and remove the effective and popular organizer Benjamin Chavis, the Wilmington police and state prosecutor—assisted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF)—concocted a case against Chavis, eight other black men (five of them high school students), and one white woman. Arrested more than a year after the disturbances, they were charged with conspiracy, burning Mike’s Grocery, and shooting at the firefighters and police who responded to the fire. (Ann Shepard was charged only with conspiracy.) The prosecutor, with the assent of the presiding judge, illegally excluded blacks from the jury. He solicited perjured testimony from his main witnesses to convict the Ten, who were sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison. Their convictions sparked a campaign across North Carolina, the nation, and the world to free them. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Wilmington Ten, by Kenneth Robert Janken

African American Studies/American History/Excerpts/History/Law / Legal History/North Carolina/Sociology

February 3, 2016

Excerpt: The Trials of Laura Fair: Sex, Murder, and Insanity in the Victorian West, by Carole Haber

In arguing that the jury had to find Laura “not guilty by reason of insanity,” Quint and Cook hoped to focus their attention around four central issues. At the heart of their case, they argued, was the notion that Laura was unconscious and irrational at the time of the murder. In contrast to the prosecution, which had relied on gossip and rumor to condemn Laura’s character, they would base their case on the latest scientific findings and medical expertise. By calling to the stand doctors with advanced knowledge and training, they would prove that Laura—much like Mary Harris before her—was a victim herself, captive to the effects of severe organic disease. Especially when her menstrual cycle approached, she experienced recurring bouts of hysterical mania that left her without control of her actions or awareness of events. Thus, no matter how heinous the act appeared, she was not responsible for its commission. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Trials of Laura Fair: Sex, Murder, and Insanity in the Victorian West, by Carole Haber

American History/American Studies/Excerpts/Health / Medicine/History/Law / Legal History/Sociology/Women's Studies

November 19, 2015

Toby L. Parcel: Exploring Attitudes toward Public School Desegregation Over Time

Why have some school districts sustained school desegregation over many years while others have resegregated by race and income? Can we tie these differing histories to the attitudes and values of residents in these areas? Have attitudes and values in Wake County, North Carolina, regarding school desegregation changed over the last few years?

These are some of the questions I am investigating following the 2015 publication of my book with Andy Taylor, The End of Consensus: Diversity, Neighborhoods, and the Politics of Public School Assignments. In that work Andy and I reported the results of a mixed-methods study that used interviews, focus groups, archival data, case studies, and a 2011 representative survey of Wake County adults to understand school assignment policy change in the county. Continue Reading Toby L. Parcel: Exploring Attitudes toward Public School Desegregation Over Time

Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers/Sociology

October 21, 2015

Holly M. Karibo: Race and Violence on the Northern Borderline: The Case of the Windsor “Jazz Riot”

If the Windsor Jazz Riot has long been lost from our collective historical memory, it provides an important moment to think about current national debates over riots, race relations, and national boundaries. Borders—be they national, geographical, social, or cultural—provide us the opportunity to blame outsiders for social ills, and for expressing collective fears. We tend to associate this most often with the U.S.–Mexico border, where inflammatory language about anchor babies, Mexican rapists, and drug smugglers dominates public debates. But there is a deep history of racial division along the U.S.–Canada divide, one that needs to be acknowledged as we debate the “American” race problem in the twenty-first century. Continue Reading Holly M. Karibo: Race and Violence on the Northern Borderline: The Case of the Windsor “Jazz Riot”

American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Sociology

Lindsey A. Freeman: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulucene, Atomicocene

I’m going with Atomicocene because what has changed with this new time is not only humans and their activities, but specifically, and most dramatically, the role some humans in atomic states have played in the spreading of “artificial” radioactivity across the globe. Continue Reading Lindsey A. Freeman: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulucene, Atomicocene

Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Sociology

Lauren J. Silver: Enlivening Social Justice through Spanning Boundaries

“Why didn’t we learn about this stuff earlier? I can’t believe I’m in college and this is the first time I’m learning in class about present-day racism, sexism, and homophobia.” These are the types of comments that I often hear from students in the classes I teach on Urban Education, Youth Identities, and Gender & Education. Once, a white young woman, a graduate student, broke down in tears during class as she opened up about her sense of shame. She was outraged about the indignities experienced by poor children of color in urban schools and she felt ashamed that she was previously unaware of these realities. I can see on their faces when it begins to dawn on them that not only have their educations been amiss in preparing them to take action against injustice, they have not even been given the tools to see or acknowledge the inequalities of which they themselves are a part. Continue Reading Lauren J. Silver: Enlivening Social Justice through Spanning Boundaries

Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers/Sociology

Lindsey A. Freeman: On the Anniversary of Fukushima

I am in one of the uncanniest locations to learn of this tragedy on the other side of the globe. Richland was the bedroom community for scientists, engineers, and managers working at the Hanford Site, a top-secret complex created for the Manhattan Project. After the war, Hanford was a key location for nuclear bomb production during the Cold War. Now the site is mostly dedicated to cleaning up after those nuclear adventures. Continue Reading Lindsey A. Freeman: On the Anniversary of Fukushima

Author blog entry/Current Events/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/Science/Sociology/UNC Press Authors

February 25, 2015

Lauren J. Silver: Beyond Snapshot Stories: The Power in Youth Representation

2014 was marked by protests across the nation insisting that Black Lives Matter. Many decry the justice system, which has failed to indict officers and vigilantes who have killed unarmed black children, while girl victims receive little notice in the press. We have an urgent need to tell and listen to deeper, more nuanced stories about these youth and other youth of color who remain either invisible or hyper-visible in marked, stereotyped ways. Continue Reading Lauren J. Silver: Beyond Snapshot Stories: The Power in Youth Representation

African American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Sociology/Women's Studies

December 11, 2014

Video: Celebrating 75 Years of ‘These Are Our Lives’

Contemporary documentary projects such as StoryCorps and Humans of New York thrive today in a spirit similar to that which led the vision of the Federal Writers’ Project and These Are Our Lives. They remind us that every life has a story, and every story matters. Continue Reading Video: Celebrating 75 Years of ‘These Are Our Lives’

African American Studies/American History/American Studies/History/Labor Studies/Literature/Sociology/Southern Studies/UNC Press News

December 1, 2014

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo: What We’re Missing When We Talk about Integrated Neighborhoods

What is the relationship between residential segregation and racial inequality? Scholars have spent decades analyzing data and arguing that residential segregation is the “linchpin” of racial inequality in the United States. The conclusion that many draw, therefore, is that residential integration is the key to reducing racial inequality. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, not quite. Continue Reading Sarah Mayorga-Gallo: What We’re Missing When We Talk about Integrated Neighborhoods

African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies/Sociology

November 3, 2014

Excerpt: Behind the White Picket Fence, by Sarah Mayorga-Gallo

The use of non-White bodies by Whites to designate neighborhood space as distinct from racially segregated suburbia is an important commodifying and classifying practice of this white, urban, middle-class habitus. Important to note here is that in Creekridge Park very few White residents have relationships with their non-White neighbors. Whites did, however, regularly refer to non-Whites during our interviews to signal neighborhood diversity and interracial interactions. Continue Reading Excerpt: Behind the White Picket Fence, by Sarah Mayorga-Gallo

African American Studies/Excerpts/Latino Studies/North Carolina/Sociology

Zandria F. Robinson: OutKast Reunion Tour: After Twenty Years, the South Still Got Something to Say

I grew up watching OutKast videos on the now-defunct Video Jukebox Network, affectionately known as “The Box.” Although OutKast received some play on MTV and BET in the early 1990s, it was on The Box, which featured a range of underground southern hip-hop artists, where I could be sure to see André “André 3000” Benjamin, Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, and other southern rappers in regular rotation. Although initially record labels largely ignored southern artists, through homegrown ingenuity, southern rappers soon emerged as a formidable force in the global music industry. By 2005, top spots on music charts were regularly held by southern hip-hop artists, southern R&B singers, or hits produced by southern artists. As Memphis rapper Project Pat noted in 2006: “Now y’all was thinkin’ Dirty South was like, ‘hee-haw, hee-haw’/Is you worth over a hundred mil? We are, we are.” Indeed, the South had something to say. Continue Reading Zandria F. Robinson: OutKast Reunion Tour: After Twenty Years, the South Still Got Something to Say

African American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Music/Sociology/Southern Studies

December 5, 2013

The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

Durham’s ManBites Dog Theater hosts “The Best of Enemies,” a play based on the book by Osha Gray Davidson about the unlikely friendship between a poor white member of the KKK and a poor black civil rights activist in 1960s North Carolina. Continue Reading The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

African American Studies/American History/Civil Rights/Events/History/North Carolina/Sociology/Southern Studies/Theatre & Performing Arts/Video

November 13, 2013

Interview: Mical Raz on poverty, mental health, and U.S. social policy

Poverty is often seen as a personal failure, whereas success is a mark of hard work; thus economic status serves a surrogate for individual self-worth, and not an indicator of society’s structure and its limitations. Poor men and women are still often portrayed in stereotypical terms as being lazy and unmotivated. Continue Reading Interview: Mical Raz on poverty, mental health, and U.S. social policy

Health / Medicine/History/Interviews/Public Policy/Sociology

February 15, 2013

Laura Browder: Women’s Gun Culture in America

The image of the armed woman as white, suburban-looking, and thoroughly domesticated is but one aspect of women’s gun culture, and women’s relationship to guns, in the United States. Continue Reading Laura Browder: Women’s Gun Culture in America

American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Sociology/Women's Studies

December 10, 2012

Join us on Twitter for a #FreetoBe40 event with Lori Rotskoff

It’s a Twitter event! This Wednesday, December 12, from 9-10 pm EST join @LoriRotskoff, @uncpressblog, and @MamaDramaNY for a Twitter celebration and discussion of the 40th anniversary of Free to Be…You and Me, the popular nonsexist children’s album/book/TV special that has helped shape the childhoods and parenting practices of generations. Continue Reading Join us on Twitter for a #FreetoBe40 event with Lori Rotskoff

American Studies/Education/Events/Gender Studies/History/Juvenile/Music/Sociology/UNC Press Authors/Women's Studies

November 13, 2012

Interview: Lori Rotskoff and Laura L. Lovett, editors of When We Were Free to Be

Lori Rotskoff and Laura L. Lovett, editors of When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made discuss the legacy of Free to Be…You and Me after 40 years. Continue Reading Interview: Lori Rotskoff and Laura L. Lovett, editors of When We Were Free to Be

American Studies/Gender Studies/Interviews/Sociology/Women's Studies

November 6, 2012

Interview: Nicole Fabricant on Mobilizing Bolivia’s Displaced

Mobility is a central trope in the book because it informed my thinking about indigeneity and movement building in Bolivia. I realized that in order to effectively capture the Landless Peasant Movement’s ( Movimiento Sin Tierra/MST) organizational strategies, I would have to be in constant motion. I traveled with MST activists on the back of agricultural trucks for nearly 20 hours from the city to their communities, lived in two MST agro-ecological communities, traversed regional spaces, as well as national and international spaces of organizing. The life of an organizer is in constant motion and, as an ethnographer, I too had to be constantly traveling. Continue Reading Interview: Nicole Fabricant on Mobilizing Bolivia’s Displaced

Anthropology/Interviews/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/Sociology

Carrie Hamilton: Sexual Diversity in Cuba

It would be a mistake to say that Cuba’s revolutionary leaders came clean on the history of anti-homosexual discrimination and violence. But there were public signs of a willingness to revisit that history in a new light. The most famous example was the 1993 release of the film ‘Strawberry and Chocolate,’ by Cuba’s most prominent film director, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, a friend and ally of Fidel Castro. Continue Reading Carrie Hamilton: Sexual Diversity in Cuba

Author blog entry/Cuba/Film/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Sociology

Excerpt: Making Marriage Work, by Kristin Celello

By 1930 divorce had indeed become a reality of everyday American life. At the same time, however, many Americans were deeply anxious about what the escalating divorce rate meant for the family, women, and the very future of the nation. Such fears were fanned by an emergent group of experts who spent the first several decades of the twentieth century identifying a “crisis” in American marriage. Continue Reading Excerpt: Making Marriage Work, by Kristin Celello

American Studies/Excerpts/Sociology