African Studies

Mari N. Crabtree traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. African American victims and survivors had to find a way to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching. Crabtree offers a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in a strategy for “working through” trauma that has long existed within the African American cultural tradition: the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility—a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain.

Joshua Myers considers the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logic of academic disciplinarity and how the ideas of Black intellectuals created different ways of thinking and knowing in their pursuit of conceptual and epistemological freedom. Bookended by meditations with June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, Of Black Study focuses on how W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers, and Cedric Robinson contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge.

Derrick Bell is perhaps best known for the principled stand he took at Harvard in 1990 when he quit his tenured position on the law-school faculty to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to a black woman. Now a visiting professor at New York Law School, Bell is still deeply interested in issues of race relations and has chosen to explore the subject fictionally in "Afrolantica Legacies." In a nutshell, the story goes like this: a mysterious land mass suddenly appears in the Atlantic Ocean, a fabulous island on which only black people can survive.

Best-selling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the social fabric. In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of 'white privilege' and the weaponisation of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervour of the 'woke mob'.

Feminism and atheism are “dirty words” that Americans across the political spectrum love to debate - and hate. Throw them into a blender and you have a toxic brew that supposedly defies decency, respectability, and Americana. Putting gender at the center of the equation, progressive “Religious Nones” of color are spearheading an anti-racist, social justice humanism that disrupts the “colorblind” ethos of European American atheist and humanist agendas, which focus principally on church-state separation.

How do you learn to be a Black man in America? For young Black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of Black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years.

Accessible and comprehensive, Contemporary Theology: An Introduction by professor and author Kirk R. MacGregor provides a chronological survey of the major thinkers and schools of thought in modern theology in a manner that is both approachable and intriguing. Unique among introductions to...

In Frontline Bodies, Nicolas Martin-Breteau argues that sports are not—and have never been—purely about entertainment for Black Americans. Instead, beginning in the 1890s during Reconstruction, Black Americans proactively used athletics as a tactic to fight racial oppression. Martin-Breteau considers the work of Edwin B. Henderson, a prominent Black physical educator, civil rights activist, and historian of Black sports.

Pearl K. Ford Dowe argues that ambition for Black women cannot be measured only by political candidacies and ascents of the political chain of power. Black women are uniquely positioned within their communities to influence politics and public policy, which stems from unique variables of socialization, gender and racial identity, and marginalization that shape the political attitudes of Black women. Thus, Dowe asserts that Black women's political ambition often manifests outside formal politics, in activism and community building, a process that is linked to a wider radical vision.

The second edition of this pathbreaking, widely taught book offers five new chapters, on breastfeeding and Black infant health; Black birthing during COVID; Black doulas rethinking birthing practices; the recent buildup of a US national movement; and expanding the global movement for sexual and reproductive wellbeing. Other chapters are updated throughout. Birthing Justice puts black women's voices at the center of the debate on what should be done to fix the broken maternal care system.

What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. This book illuminates the US's core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being. This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement.

This is the question jazz musician and poet Rafa Selase asks as he journeys to the African Slave Coast in an attempt to reconcile a tumultuous past with present-day chaos. My Journey of Faith To The African Slave Coast, Reconciling a Past Not So Long Ago, documents his intense seven-day journey with a group of unexpected travel companions as he discovers some uncomfortable truths about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, religion, race, and gender.

Gordon Braxton was in his second year of college before anybody bothered to speak to him about sexual violence, despite the fact that he already knew friends and family members that had survived sexual assault. Unfortunately, this is a common experience, as many young men and boys, especially Black boys, do not have an opportunity to discuss their views on sexual violence and what role they might play in preventing it. Empowering Black Boys to Challenge Rape Culture supports the training of a rising generation by providing commentary from an experienced educator.

Racial Justice and the Catholic Church examines the presence of racism in America from its early history through the Civil Rights Movement and the election of Barack Obama. It also explores how Catholic social teaching has been used - and not used - to promote reconciliation and justice.

A revelatory look at one of America's most progressive cities—Minneapolis—as journalist Justin Ellis returns to his hometown to grapple with the quiet history of white supremacy there in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and in turn uncovers his family’s story of surviving “Minnesota...

Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation focuses on the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of health and considers both risk and resiliency factors for the Black LGBT population. Contributors to this collection intimately understand the associations between health and intersectional anti-Black racism, heterosexism, homonegativity, biphobia, transphobia, and social class.

Tired of the dating scene in suburban Philadelphia, 29-year-old Myles Moore is waiting for the right woman. He fills his days with basketball, teaching grade school, and “good peoples,” but his buddies always get on his case about his lofty standards in females. When he meets beautiful Marisa Marrero, a black Latina lawyer, he knows she is the woman of his dreams. But Marisa is all too human—ambitious, self-sufficient, and with her own views of romance.

In this pioneering study, Sergio A. Lussana offers the first in-depth investigation of the social dynamics between enslaved men and examines how individuals living under the conditions of bondage negotiated masculine identities. He demonstrates that African American men worked to create their own culture through a range of recreational pursuits similar to those enjoyed by their white counterparts, such as drinking, gambling, fighting, and hunting. Lussana also addresses male resistance to slavery by shifting attention from the visible, organized world of slave rebellion to the private realms of enslaved men's lives. He reveals how these men developed an oppositional community in defiance of the regulations of the slaveholder and shows that their efforts were intrinsically linked to forms of resistance on a larger scale. The trust inherent in these private relationships was essential in driving conversations about revolution.

Considered one of “the most innovative studies of American emancipation in the Civil War” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass), Somewhere Toward Freedom is a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that...

A new history of US education through the nineteenth century that rigorously accounts for Black, Native, and white experiences; a story that exposes the idea of American education as “the great equalizer” to not only be a lie, but also a myth that reproduces past harms. Education is the...