Search Results for: black history month

January 25, 2016

Graham T. Nessler: The Politics of Racial Difference: The View from Revolutionary Hispaniola

As the Obama era nears its end, the politics of racial (and religious) difference seem to dominate the headlines. From the anti-Muslim violence and bigotry that have intensified following the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, to the heightening of the affirmative action debate to the festering controversies over racially-charged criminal justice issues such as policing and mass incarceration, this appears to be a particularly polarized moment in America. As I finished my book this past fall, I often thought of parallels between these current events and my own area of historical expertise: the Haitian Revolution and the counterrevolutionary project that followed. Continue Reading Graham T. Nessler: The Politics of Racial Difference: The View from Revolutionary Hispaniola

Categories History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
September 21, 2015

April Merleaux: The Subtlety of the Sugar Babies

Last summer, to celebrate finishing the manuscript of my book, Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness, I went to New York to see artist Kara Walker’s installation A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby in an old Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn. Walker is known for making bold art that calls on viewers to consider histories of racial violence in the United States, and A Subtlety did just that. Sugar, Walker points out, is historically tied to race in many and multiple ways. Continue Reading April Merleaux: The Subtlety of the Sugar Babies

Categories African American History/American History/Art / Architecture/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
September 1, 2015

Interview: Cecelia Tichi on Jack London’s Fight for a Better America

Gina Mahalek: Jack London is well known for his adventure novels, like The Call of the Wild. But apart from tales such as the one about a dog in the Yukon, who was he? And why does he matter today?
Cecelia Tichi: Jack London (1876-1916) was the most popular U.S. writer of the early 20th century, the first to earn $1 million. In a career spanning twenty years, he published fifty books, hundreds of short stories, and numerous essays. His books sold well internationally and have been translated into several languages. He continues to be one of the most famous and esteemed writers in the world—arguably better known and respected abroad than here in the United States. Continue Reading Interview: Cecelia Tichi on Jack London’s Fight for a Better America

Categories American Studies/Interviews/Literature
April 16, 2015

David Gilbert: The Streaming Music Debate: Some Historical Context

It is certainly an interesting time for the creation, selling, and distribution of popular music (not to mention less-popular music, like jazz and classical, which encounter even more drastic dilemmas, as recently pointed out at Salon.com). Many of the artists taking a stand against the new status quo in recorded music allude to the history of music making in the United States, often referring back to earlier eras wherein musicians received unfair deals from recording companies and large majorities of performers struggled to make a living, even as a “top 1%” of musicians dominated sales and marketing. This look back to history makes sense. Continue Reading David Gilbert: The Streaming Music Debate: Some Historical Context

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Media Studies/Music
January 29, 2015

Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

In 1966, Charles “Charlie” Scott (b. 1948 in NYC) became the first African American student to attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship. He decided to attend UNC rather than basketball powerhouse Davidson College after a wrenching moment at a small café in Davidson, North Carolina. Former Davidson College basketball star Terry Holland, who both played and later served as assistant coach under the college’s legendary coach Lefty Driesell, and UNC law professor and civil rights attorney Daniel H. Pollitt, who was a passionate advocate for social justice in Chapel Hill during the 1950s and 1960s, vividly recall Scott’s historic decision. Pollitt worked with Dean Smith, UNC’s beloved basketball coach (1961-1997) and Robert Seymour, progressive minister at the Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, to recruit Charlie Scott and to help integrate the university community. Continue Reading Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Sports
November 14, 2014

Christopher C. Sellers: Beyond Environmentalism: Marching toward Climatism

Over the last decade around New York, a host of more localized concerns and groups have mobilized around a new bevvy of “green” causes: banding together to rebuild after Sandy, campaigning for locally grown and organic food, and fighting against fracking. At the People’s Climate March, they found welcome and common cause with those pushing for divestiture from fossil fuels, as well as those from more far flung locales, those rebuilding on the Gulf Coast after Katrina, those from island nations and from other communities on the “front line” of environmental change. In an earlier era, “the environment” had gained traction because of how it linked so many issues long considered separate, from pollution to wilderness preservation. Now “climate” may have proven itself sufficiently capacious to serve as an entire movement’s umbrella. Continue Reading Christopher C. Sellers: Beyond Environmentalism: Marching toward Climatism

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers
November 11, 2014

Sneak Peek: Great Reads for Spring 2015

Some extra good news? Even though our Spring 2015 books haven’t been published yet, you can pre-order them at the sale price now, and we’ll ship the books as soon as they become available. What’s coming along this spring? We’ve got a handful featured below. Browse the interactive catalog above to see the full list. Continue Reading Sneak Peek: Great Reads for Spring 2015

Categories Sale/UNC Press News
October 8, 2014

Interview: Christopher Norment on the beauty of the desert ecosystem

The amount of surface water in the Basin and Range country of California and Nevada, where my book is set, has fluctuated tremendously over the last several million years and the fortunes of the salamanders, toads, and pupfishes have waxed and waned with the advance and retreat of these waters. Imagine standing above Death Valley 150,000 years ago and looking out over ancient Lake Manly, which was six hundred feet deep and eighty miles long. Lake Manly—and Searles Lake, Panamint Lake, and Tecopa Lake, on and on—would have been stunningly beautiful, part of a widespread Pleistocene “sea.” The fishes and amphibians that lived in or near these lakes, or along feeder streams, must have prospered. Now these waters have been replaced by desert and salt pan playas, and “my” species have retreated into refugia, where they persevere, sometimes against great odds. Continue Reading Interview: Christopher Norment on the beauty of the desert ecosystem

Categories Biology/Environmental Studies/Interviews/Science
April 10, 2014

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

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Music/Sociology/Southern Studies
February 21, 2014

Alex Lubin: Malcolm X’s Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

Malcolm’s transition would include rejecting the homegrown and Ahmadiyya-based, heterodox Islam practiced by the Nation of Islam and embracing the intellectual, moral, and political currents of orthodox Sunni Islam, African decolonization, and Arab nationalism. In this way, Malcolm’s political and moral commitments combined sometimes-contradictory political ideologies, including those of Muslim Brothers, secular pan-Africanists, and Nasserist pan-Arabists. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Malcolm X’s Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Global Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Islamic Studies/Middle Eastern Studies/Religion
November 11, 2013

Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

In my opinion, the most interesting topic for discussion is not that Cubans are finally embracing private enterprise, but rather that the new legislation will surely change the existing face of private enterprise on the island. Talk to Cubans about the new business, property, and internet reform measures and you are less likely to hear them marveling at the wonders of capitalism than to hear them debate the variety of state-imposed taxes that often leave them with only a few CUC (Cuban Convertible Pesos that carry a 1:1 exchange rate with the U.S. dollar) at the end of each month. Continue Reading Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

Categories Author blog entry/Cuba/Economics/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
November 5, 2013

Interview: Lawrence S. Earley on The Workboats of Core Sound

More than anything else in a Core Sound fishing community, a workboat is a living social history of the people who have been connected to it. It was built by one person for another person and named after a third. This little web of names expands over time as the boat is sold to other people and renamed, is repaired, and rebuilt by others, or is relocated to another community. Fishermen seem to have little difficulty in remembering this web of connections, and so workboats function as memory banks that contain much of the social history of the community and carry it from one generation to the next. As boats disappear, it’s not clear what will happen to this history. Continue Reading Interview: Lawrence S. Earley on The Workboats of Core Sound

Categories Interviews/North Carolina/Photography
August 12, 2013

Tracy E. K’Meyer: Busing and the Desegregation of Louisville Schools

For historians of school desegregation, Louisville’s story challenges a narrative that has been dominated by resistance, disillusion, and failure. For citizens, these stories remind us how our predecessors struggled for equality in education and inspire us to keep up a fight that is far from over. Continue Reading Tracy E. K’Meyer: Busing and the Desegregation of Louisville Schools

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers/History
April 4, 2013

Gordon K. Mantler: Remembering that Other March on Washington

Only during the Poor People’s Campaign did activists of so many different backgrounds—from veterans of the labor and southern civil rights movements to Chicano, American Indian, antiwar, and welfare rights activists—attempt to construct a physical and spiritual community that addressed poverty and broader issues of social justice for longer than a one-day rally. Continue Reading Gordon K. Mantler: Remembering that Other March on Washington

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/History/Latino Studies
March 19, 2013

Rod Andrew Jr.: When South Carolina Had Two Governors

Hampton sought to overthrow the corrupt Republican regime in Columbia and promised to protect black civil rights; Chamberlain had tried to bring reform and publicly dismissed Hampton’s promises to black voters. Continue Reading Rod Andrew Jr.: When South Carolina Had Two Governors

Categories Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/Politics/UNC Press News
January 30, 2013

Lara Putnam: Families and the Cost of Borders

Some of the deepest costs of our prohibitionist immigration system have to do with family. And they’re not just emotional costs—they’re economic costs as well. Continue Reading Lara Putnam: Families and the Cost of Borders

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Law / Legal History/Public Policy