March 12, 2021

Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Lyrical Activism

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. The following excerpt is taken from Lyrical Strains: Liberalism and Women’s Poetry in Nineteenth-Century America by Elissa Zellinger In the opening chapter of Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s unpublished autobiography, “A Human Life,” written while she was in her eighties, the poet describes visiting her childhood home… Continue Reading Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Lyrical Activism

Categories Literature/UNC Press News/Women's Studies
March 11, 2021

Marietta Webb, Christian Science, and Race in America

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. Guest post by Amy B. Voorhees, author of A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture Marietta Webb was a founding member of a Christian Science congregation attended almost entirely by African Americans on the east side of Los Angeles. Local… Continue Reading Marietta Webb, Christian Science, and Race in America

Categories African American Studies/Christian Studies/Religion
March 11, 2021

Upcoming Tour Dates for Anthea Butler, author of “White Evangelical Racism”

“Show[s] how evangelicals’ contemporary embrace of right-wing politics is rooted in its centuries-long problem with race. This scathing takedown of evangelicalism’s ‘racism problem’ will challenge evangelicals to confront and reject racism within church communities.”—Publishers Weekly Leading historian and public commentator Anthea Butler will be touring (virtually) to present her new book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America,… Continue Reading Upcoming Tour Dates for Anthea Butler, author of “White Evangelical Racism”

Categories Events/UNC Press News
March 10, 2021

Culinary Justice: Acknowledging Our Past and Shaping our Future Through Food featuring Michael Twitty—March 11, 2021

March 11th 2021, 7pm EST / 4pm PST; hosted by Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill Register now! Join Michael W. Twitty, author of newly released Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook, the 25th and final volume in the series, along with his fellow Savor the South cookbook authors Bill Smith, Bridgette A. Lacy, and Nancie McDermott as they discuss the complicated ancestries of some of our most… Continue Reading Culinary Justice: Acknowledging Our Past and Shaping our Future Through Food featuring Michael Twitty—March 11, 2021

Categories UNC Press News
March 9, 2021

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

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Gender Studies/UNC Press News
March 8, 2021

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

Categories Gender Studies/History/UNC Press News
March 5, 2021

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

Categories African American Studies/Literature/Women's Studies
March 4, 2021

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

Categories UNC Press News
March 3, 2021

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

Categories American History/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
March 2, 2021

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

Categories Gender Studies/History
March 1, 2021

Happy Book Birthday to Michael Twitty’s “Rice”

As I sit in my office at UNC Press on a rare day’s visit to the premises, given our collective pandemic caution, I gaze—lovingly, it’s fair to say—at the Savor the South cookbook collection sitting on my bookshelf. Twenty-four cookbooks, twenty-four southern foods and food traditions. And on March 1, with the publication of Michael Twitty’s Rice: A Savor the… Continue Reading Happy Book Birthday to Michael Twitty’s “Rice”

Categories African American Studies/Food Studies
February 26, 2021

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

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/History/UNC Press News
February 25, 2021

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

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/History/UNC Press News
February 24, 2021

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

Categories African American Studies/Music/UNC Press News
February 24, 2021

Upcoming Tour Dates with Karen L. Cox, Author of “No Common Ground”

“In her superb contribution to the history of the South, Cox targets the massive influence of the United Daughters of the Confederacy on Southerners in the late 1890s and beyond, especially in the area of monument building . . . . This is an invaluable study of all-too-frequently misplaced genealogical and regional venerations. Highly recommended for U.S., antebellum, Civil War,… Continue Reading Upcoming Tour Dates with Karen L. Cox, Author of “No Common Ground”

Categories Events
February 23, 2021

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

Categories African American Studies
February 22, 2021

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

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Civil War/Music/Politics/Southern Studies/UNC Press News
February 19, 2021

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

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Political Science/Politics/UNC Press News
February 18, 2021

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

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Health / Medicine/Islamic Studies
February 17, 2021

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

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Literature