Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisA stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiersThough both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomedmarking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores the crucial role of photography in (re)telling and shaping African American narratives of the Civil War, pulling from a dynamic visual archive that has largely gone unacknowledged.With over seventy images, The Black Civil War Soldier contains a huge breadth of primary and archival materials, many of which are rarely reproduced. The photographs are supplemented with handwritten captions, letters, and other personal materials; Willis not only dives into the lives of black Union soldiers, but also includesTrade ReviewIn a troubled age, when the past is increasingly called into question, we are all history buffs now. To that end, this remarkable book fills an enormous gap in our collective understanding of the past, a page-turner that will break your heart. Willis, professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, centers extraordinary and largely unknown images of Black Civil War soldiers within a reported narrative that highlights the enormous hardships they faced and the contributions they made. She makes history feel like a family album. * Fortune Magazine, named one of the "Best Books of 2021, so far" *The book aims to bring these stoic portraits of black soldiers to life – with personal stories, to family members back home, and interviews with historians and personal observations from a skilled photography expert. It’s what Willis calls the African American experience, as well as resilience. * The Guardian *The scholar, author, curator, and photographer Deborah Willis makes a fascinating contribution to that conversation with The Black Civil War Soldier, her new book from NYU Press. In it, Willis gives a face and a story to some of the war’s most overlooked figures, from the Black men fighting for their freedom from slavery to the women who educated and tended to those men on the battlefield. * Vogue.com *Memorable images abound in [this] historical catalog of American photography. Essential...a book that invites rereading. * STARRED Kirkus Review *[S]heds light on the experience of black Civil War soldier through never-seen-before photographs from the 19th century. * Daily Mail *The book reminds us that even the ultimate fight for freedom — when Blacks and some whites were on the same side — equality even then was barely a notion. * New York Daily News *Willis, department chair for photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, had noticed a dearth of images of Black servicemen from the era. For The Black Civil War Soldier, she pulled together photographs, letters, and diary entries to shed light on not only what Black servicemen were experiencing, but also what Black teachers, Black doctors, Black children, and other members of the community were. * Philadelphia Inquirer *Together, this narrative and the photographs make an astounding book that show an often-little-told human side of the War Between the States. * Goshen News *At a time when victory in the Civil War was anything but assured, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged the North to arm African American soldiers to fight against the forces that had enslaved them in the Confederate South. In doing so, he recognized the vital visual argument for citizenship that a uniformed Black man would make with ‘the brass letter, US’ on his belt and an ‘eagle on his button.’ Now, in this breathtaking volume, the scholar Deborah Willis reveals to us the fullness of their humanity through a photographic record she interprets through the paper trail they left behind. At once intimate and panoramic, The Black Civil War Soldier is both a major contribution to Civil War studies and an album of our ancestors’ journey at the critical hour of American history that belongs to all of us as the descendants of their sacrifice. * Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University *In the unmatched research presented in The Black Civil War Soldier, a wealth of lush images, majestic fashion, narrative elements, and crucial pictorial details—books, uniforms, guns among them—perform for the camera a telling contradiction to the underlying horror embedded in the text, and points to the formidable role of photography that Dr. Deborah Willis has long championed. Through the lives of these soldiers, sailors, doctors, and nurses as well as the stories of cooks, teachers, wives, and lovers, Dr. Willis weaves a compelling narrative through the photographic record where courage and activism, or what she has called ‘difficulty and desire,’ shines through * Kellie Jones, author of South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. *Deborah Willis’s vivid accounts of Black soldiers’ sacrifices on the battlefield and their compassion for those on the home front make this book a must read for all Americans. Skillfully employing photographs and other printed materials as equal sources of history, Willis’s nuanced depictions capture the urgent desire for freedom and full citizenship of more than 190,000 Black soldiers and sailors who volunteered for the Union. In The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, Deborah Willis once again gives us a deeply researched, visually arresting, and textured chronicle of Black people at a crucial turning point in US history. * Francille Rusan Wilson, author of The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890–1950 *The legendary photographer, curator, and historian Deb Willis has been shifting the way I see and think of images and historical representation for decades. The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict, her gorgeous and meticulously researched photobook, is expansive, yet it also manages to convey the intimacy of a beloved family heirloom. It is an impassioned tribute to America’s Black soldiers and their families during the Civil War. It is also an insistence that we consider the many ramifications of conflict and racism. This is a monumental work, as well as a monument to the undying quest for freedom. * Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize *Enacts a visual curation of black Civil War history as few besides Willis are so expertly capable of. As deeply reflective about the telling of African American history using images, and given to a conception of African American men and women as “soldiers” within a strenuous physical and moral campaign against slavery, The Black Civil War Soldier is the handsomest picture book and more. * Civil War Book Review *The Black Civil War Soldier’s rich assemblage of tangible evidence and memory provides both material culture readers and general audiences an expanded resource for absorbing and reflecting upon this history. * Winterthur Portfolio *Combining period images, selections from the letters, diaries, memoirs, and other writings of men and women from the period, and a well-written narrative text, Prof. Willis has produced an excellent look at the Civil War and its aftermath, concentrating on the role of African Americans in military and naval service. * The NYMAS Review *

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Book SynopsisDocuments the origins, actions, and impacts of the Black Student Union in the state of Washington during the tumultuous late 1960s.Washington State Rising documents the origins, actions, and impact of the Black Student Union (BSU) in Washington from 1967 to 1970. The BSU was a politicized student organization that had chapters across the West Coast and played a prominent role in the student wing of the Black Power Movement. Through accounts of Black student struggles at two different college campuses in Washington, one urban and one rural, Marc Arsell Robinson details how the BSU led highly consequential protest campaigns at both institutions and beyond, which led to reforms such as the establishment of Black Studies programs, increased hiring of Black faculty and staff, and new initiatives to recruit and retain students of color.Washington State Rising is the first book to document 1960s Black student activism in the Pacific Northwest and includes eTrade ReviewIlluminates and broadens our understanding of the important role that Black students played in the Black Power Movement in the racially homogeneous regions of the Pacific Northwest. The book’s expertly curated sources document the experiences of black students at the University of Washington and Washington State University, and it illustrates the ways in which they organized through the Black Student Union and Black Studies Movement to agitate for progressive curricular and social change. -- Dwayne Mack, author of Black Spokane: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland NorthwestContributes new dimensions to the history of African Americans in the Pacific Northwest while broadening understanding of how the Black Power movement unfolded across the nation. Showing the innovative tactics and pivotal accomplishments of the BSU on Seattle’s University of Washington campus, the book also explores the struggles of Black students at Washington State University, a nearly all-White campus located far from any Black community. Both case studies enrich the literature on Black student activism. -- James Gregory, University of WashingtonRich, interesting, and original. Makes a strong contribution to the broad history of the Black Power and the Black Student Movements. -- Brian Purnell, Bowdoin CollegeFeatures fascinating oral histories with former BSU members to illuminate the understudied experiences of the Black Power movement on campuses in the Pacific Northwest. Robinson is an impressive writer and storyteller. -- Matthew Delmont, author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and AbroadUncovers new facets of the Black Power movement and its local manifestation in Washington state in an accessible and engaging way. -- Akinyele Omowale Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom MovementSet within the context of the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, and the women’s movement, Washington State Rising reiterates an important historical phenomenon. Local activism has ramifications well beyond local borders. On this point, Robinson brings his story full circle to Black Lives Matter. * BookTrib *Robinson explores late 1960s Black student activism in his urban hometown of Seattle and rural college town of Pullman in this well-researched look at the origins and influence of the Black Student Union in Washington state. His scholarly monograph broadens understanding of Jim Crow North... [and] engaging interviews with former BSU members enhance the narrative. * Washington State Magazine *

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Book SynopsisHONORABLE MENTION, HARRY SHAW AND KATRINA HAZZARD-DONALD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING WORK IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, GIVEN BY THE POP CULTURE ASSOCIATIONA view of transatlantic slavery's afterlife and modern Blackness through the lens of ageAlthough more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time and time again, excuses for police brutality and aggressionparticularly against Black children concern the victim appearing as a threat. But why and how is the perceived appearance of Black persons so completely separated from common perceptions of age and time? Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with regard to the history of transatlantic slavery. Focusing on Black literary culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Habiba Ibrahim examines how thTrade Review"This truly revelatory book uncovers the flesh of black age. Through a focus on black untimeliness, Habiba Ibrahim reveals a counter-history of modernity. Ibrahim adds vital new dimensions to the study of blackness as an alternative relation to time. This tremendous book reveals that black life is a state of being alienated from the time of one’s own body and a radical refusal of patriarchal adulthood." * Margo Natalie Crawford, author of Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *"Habiba Ibrahim’s Black Age opens up powerful new vocabularies and paradigms for thinking about Black cultural expression—and indeed Black life. Through beautifully argued analyses of literary texts, Ibrahim produces startling and profound insights into age, temporality, modernity, race, subjectivity, and the very category of the human." * Gayle Wald, author of It’s Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television *"Ibrahim’s dialectic of exclusion and reclamation advances an alternative way to discern the relationship between the past and the present... Black Age points us to new ways of thinking and interpreting what time it is." -- ALH Online Review * American Literary History Online Review *

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Book SynopsisTraces the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese AmericansAs one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated and well-integrated in mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally Japanese foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance in a multicultural America where racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. Different generations of Japanese Americans have responded to such pressures in ways that range from demands that their racial citizenship as bona fide Americans be recognized to a desire to maintain or recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. He also places Japanese Americans inTrade Review"In drawing and reflecting upon the voices and experiences of different generational cohorts, Tsuda not only fills a void in Japanese American studies but expands our very understanding of the concept of 'ethnic heritage.' Adeptly parsing processes of assimilation, transnationalism, racialization, and multicultural discourse, Tsuda engages the factors that shape the retention and refashioning of ancestral culture." -- Michael Omi,University of California, Berkeley"Using the keyword `generation, Tsuda deftly explores notions of transnational ethnicity among contemporary Japanese Americans, moving beyond internment to provide an insightful analysis of how modern Japanese Americans have created new identities and communities in the American cultural landscape." -- K. Scott Wong,author of Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War"[The books] main strength is its comparison in ethnic heritage of four different generations of Japanese Americans. None of the previous books on this subject has compared three or more generations in the formation of ethnicity among members of one or more ethnic groups." * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisA story of resistance, power and politics as revealed through New York City's complex history of police brutalityThe 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was the catalyst for a national conversation about race, policing, and injustice. The subsequent killings of other black (often unarmed) citizens led to a surge of media coverage which in turn led to protests and clashes between the police and local residents that were reminiscent of the unrest of the 1960s. Fight the Power examines the explosive history of police brutality in New York City and the black community's long struggle to resist it. Taylor brings this story to life by exploring the institutions and the people that waged campaigns to end the mistreatment of people of color at the hands of the police, including the black church, the black press, black communists and civil rights activists. Ranging from the 1940s to the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio, Taylor describes the significant strides made in curbing policTrade Review"Taylor provides an essential history of the now, showing how current struggles for racial justice have emerged out of a long history of police abuse, protest, and inadequate reforms." -- Alex Vitale,author of The End of Policing"The time is ripe for this kind of book; and this history delivers the most informed and reasonable voice to an unprecedented and eager public readership. I can hardly wait to teach this book in my lectures and seminars in African American, urban and ethnic history and public policy. The American reading public has been presented with a precious gift by Professor Clarence Taylor: Bravo!" -- Komozi Woodard,author of A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics"This timely and urgent account of the long reign of police terror inflicted on Black New Yorkers also tells a heroic and largely unheralded story of resistance. In fighting for justice, Black New Yorkers have sought a fundamental redefinition of policing. Clarence Taylor's book is needed now more than ever." -- Martha Biondi,author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City"This well-researched, well-told book provides thoughtful context for the current American reckoning with police brutality." * Publishers Weekly *"Clarence Taylor offers a judicious history of black New Yorkers’ efforts to confront police brutality since the 1940s." * Journal of American Ethnic History *"Fight the Power offers a clear sense of the intractable nature of anti-Black police violence and harassment in New York over the span of generations and of some of the ways that Black folks pushed reform of that system." * The Journal of African American History *

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Book SynopsisA glimpse into the diverse stories of Black Jews in the United States What makes a Jew? This book traces the history of Jews of African descent in America and the counter-narratives they have put forward as they stake their claims to Jewishness. The Soul of Judaism offers the first exploration of the full diversity of Black Jews, including bi-racial Jews of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent; adoptees; black converts to Judaism; and Black Hebrews and Israelites, who trace their Jewish roots to Africa and challenge the dominant western paradigm of Jews as white and of European descent. Blending historical analysis and oral history, Haynes showcases the lives of Black Jews within the Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstruction and Reform movements, as well as the religious approaches that push the boundaries of the common forms of Judaism we know today. He illuminates how in the quest to claim whiteness, American Jews of European descent gained the freedom to express their identity flTrade ReviewHaynes...surveys an underreported aspect of contemporary American Judaism in an accessible book. [The author] provides detailed information about the origins, history, culture, and differences of discrete categories of black Jews. [A]good introduction to the subject. * Publishers Weekly *In his new beautiful book,The Soul of Judaism,Bruce Haynes brings together his expertise in sociology, Jewish studies, and African-American studies to explore the history and situation of Jews of African descent in the United States. In doing so, he also adds to the large literature on the racialization of European-heritage Jews in the West. * Reading Religion *Haynes presents a balanced, nonjudgmental synopsis of diverse blocs of Jews of African descent whose self-imposed nomenclature reveals whether traditional Halakah affects what is and what is not permissive religious behavior in the everyday practice of traditional Judaism … cholarly but reader friendly, the book confronts the dynamics of separation, integration, and acculturation of Jews of African and Caribbean heritage into the political, religious, and social history of American Jewry, primarily Ashkenazi and Sephardi. In sum, the author adroitly portrays the present and future colorization of American Jews. -- CHOICEThis eye-opening look at the different ways Jews of African descent view themselves not only challenges readers’ thoughts about how Jews identify as white in the New World, it also offers the intriguing perspective of Black Jews who feel they are the true descendants of the biblical chosen people… “The Soul of Judaism” is highly recommended for anyone who thinks seriously about Judaism and Jewish identity in the contemporary world. -- The ReporterThe caliber of thought and conceptualization that has gone into this book is staggering. Haynes hasnt just located a color line thats segregated Jewish communities from one another and limited Jewish Studies scholarship, hes crashed clear through it. His careful language regarding the trickiest matters of race, ethnicity, and religious identity will be tools we all utilize in the next several waves of scholarship as Jewish Studies grapples with its color issue, as it now must. After hearing the voices represented in this book there is no going back. Welcome to 21st century Judaism. -- Michael Alexander,Maimonides Chair in Jewish Studies, University of California, RiversideThis book is a revelation. By exploring blackness in Judaism, Bruce Haynes opens up important questions about racism, antisemitism, and the immense variety of Jewish experience, both religious and racial. Jews in the US and in the diaspora have to recognize that Judaism is not white. We have to embrace the African (and Asian, and Latin@) dimensions of Jewish identity and history. Jews who see themselves as black will find The Soul of Judaism both enlightening and welcoming. Jews who consider themselves white will find their souls are more black than they realized. As rising antisemitism and negrophobia join forces once again around the world, it is immensely valuable to learn how deeply blackness and Judaism are conjoined, as they have been for millennia. -- Howard Winant,Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraIn a highly readable and intellectually engaging book, Haynes examines, among other contentions, how the ‘whitening’ of Jewish identity continues to limit the claims of black Jews and black Hebrews, the formalized and strengthened factors that influence black Americans who convert to Judaism, and the approaches blacks and Jews use to navigate diverging interests of two stigmatized group identities. * Journal of American History *The Soul of Judaism tells us as much about the ‘soul of America’ as it does about the interesting investments made over time by those seeking to deconstruct and bypass the hard-and-fast borders that often make it impossible for many of us to think of black identity and Jewish identity at one and the same time. * American Journal of Sociology *The Soul of Judaism is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date… [it] should stand on the shelves of everyone who is interested in the shifting dynamics of religion, ethnicity and race in America. * Nova Religio *

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Book Synopsis2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the Anna Julia Cooper/CLR James Award for Outstanding Book in Africana Studies presented by the National Council for Black Studies Demonstrates how Harlemite's dynamic fight for their rights and neighborhood raised the black community's racial consciousness and established Harlem's legendary political culture In Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?, Shannon King vividly uncovers early twentieth century Harlem as an intersection between the black intellectuals and artists who created the New Negro Renaissance and the working class who found fought daily to combat institutionalized racism and gender discrimination in both Harlem and across the city. New Negro activists, such as Hubert Harrison and Frank Crosswaith, challenged local forms of economic and racial inequality in attempts to breakdown the structural manifestations that upheld them. Insurgent stay-at-home black mothers took negligent landlords to court, complaining to magistrates aboutTrade ReviewMoving past grim depictions of Harlem as a ghetto or romantic views of Harlem as the Black Mecca, Shannon King captures the neighborhood's history from below. Harlem, he shows us, was a community born from struggles for justice. King has written a rich and telling account of how Harlem's activists fought for good jobs, challenged exploitative landlords, and resisted police and reformers who targeted 'vice.' Attentive to institutions and politics, to movement building and structural racism, to interracial conflict and intraracial divisions, this is a dynamic history of a community in formation. -- Thomas J. Sugrue,author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the NorthThis is a fabulous study of Harlem, peeling back the layers of a place we thought we knew so well; no longer assuming but demonstrating precisely how the 'Negro Mecca' took shape within the crucible of angst and ambition. . . . A wonderful piece of urban and political history. -- Davarian L. Baldwin,Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Trinity CollegeWhose Harlem is this, Anyway? Community and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Erais a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. * American Historical Review *Historians will find it a perspective orchestration of individuals and movements, and students will find inspiration to grapple with the persistence of structural racism and to assert and expand individual and community rights. * Journal of American History *Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era is a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. -- David Huyssen * American Historical Review *A fine-grained account of community politics, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? is a welcome alternative to accounts of the New Negro era that focus only on the arts and prominent leaders. . . . Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, King argues that the activism associated with later eras had roots in battles for Harlem tenants rights, workers rights, and consumers rights, and for freedom from overzealous reformers and policing based on white stereotypes rather than concern for the communitys safety. -- James Davis * The Journal of American History *Highly attuned to the intraracial politics of class and gender that contested the meanings of community rights, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? . . . This excellent, highly original work adds a new dimension to the study of black neighbourhood politics in the early decades of the twentieth century through its exploration of community rights thought and activism. -- Daniel Matlin * Journal of American Studies *Through this book, labor educators can explore the historical roots of present-day issues such as the racial wealth gap and the Black Lives Matter movement, and can examine how grassroots activism around community issues confronted racism. -- Will Cooley * Labor Studies Journal *Historian King demonstrates in his excellent study that during the New Negro era, especially between WWI and the beginning of the Great Depression, blacks in Harlem vigorously fought for their community rights against tremendous odds of white discrimination.A must read for those interested in urban civil rights and race in the 20th-century US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era is a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. * American Historical Review *This book deserves much praise for these scholarly contributions, as well as the questions it raises regarding Harlems positionality to other urban black communities. * H-Net *Historians will find it a perceptive orchestration of individuals and movements, and students will find inspiration to grapple with the persistence of structural racism and to assert and expand individual and community rights. * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Making of the Negro Mecca: Harlem and the Struggle for Community Rights 13 2 "Not to Save the Union but to 'Free the Slaves'": Black Labor Activism and Community Politics during the New Negro Era 53 3 "Colored People Have Few Places to Which They Can Move": Tenants, Landlords, and Community Mobilization 93 4 "Maintaining 'a High Class of Respectability' in Negro Neighborhoods": Contestation and Congregation in Harlem's Geography of Vice and Leisure during the Prohibition Era 121 5 "Demand the Dismissal of Policemen Who Abuse the Privileges of Their Uniform": Racial Violence, Police Brutality, and Self-Protection 153 Conclusion 187 Notes 191 Select Bibliography 231 Index 247 About the Author 255

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Book SynopsisReveals the legacy of the train as a critical site of race in the United StatesDespite the seeming supremacy of car culture in the United States, the train has long been and continues to be a potent symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. For almost two centuries, the train has served as the literal and symbolic vehicle for American national identity, manifest destiny, and imperial ambitions. It's no surprise, then, that the train continues to endure in depictions across literature, film, ad music. The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role that the railroad has playedand continues to playin the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an invocation of and a depository for all manner of social, historicTrade Review"Julia Lee’s brilliant scholarly intervention is in rendering the railroad as THE technology for understanding American exceptionalism, racial exclusion, and racist state harm, as well as, contradictorily, the symbol of liberation and legitimation for so many non-white Americans who have struggled to lay claim to the U.S. The depth and breadth of Lee’s archive, from canonical American novels to contemporary films and music videos further reinforces the ubiquity of trains and the railroad in the racial hierarchies of the last two centuries and is a testament to Lee’s capacious intellect and scholarly rigor." * Jennifer Ho, author of Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture *"A fascinating interdisciplinary book offering a sustained consideration of the railroad’s cultural iconicity from the suppressed perspective of racialized authors. Lee’s distinctive expertise in literary analysis and comparative race studies covers a broad and diverse archive that conveys the railroad’s racial implications and contestations across visual, acoustic, and literary forms." * Hsuan Hsu, author of The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics *"Lee examines affinities between narratives and images of American exceptionalism and railroads, both of which narrowly orient perspective through the perception of movement. … Lee examines visual narratives of trains in railroad advertisements, in film history, and in reenactments. She examines narratives of Chinese degeneracy and Chinese American memory, of the survival and critique of Jim Crow, and of border crossings and the exploitation of migrant labor, all taking place on trains … offers valuable insights on how racism and exclusionary borders take shape through physical infrastructure." -- Manu Karuka * Public Books *

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Book SynopsisHow black Americans use digital networks to organize and cultivate solidarityUnrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, after Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. Many black Americans turned to their digital and social media networks to circulate information, cultivate solidarity, and organize during that tumultuous moment. While Ferguson and the subsequent protests made black digital networks visible to mainstream media, these networks did not coalesce overnight. They were built and maintained over years through common, everyday use.Beyond Hashtags explores these everyday practices and their relationship to larger social issues through an in-depth analysis of a trans-platform network of black American digital and social media users and content creators. In the crucial years leading up to the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives, black Americans used digital networks not only to cope with day-to-daTrade ReviewA masterwork of ethical, nuanced research on race and new media. Skillfully assembling analyses of multiple online media platforms, users, and practices, Florini examines how the 'interstitial hustle' of Black podcasters engaging audience across Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, and merchandising sites enables safety, political activism, and innovative content. -- André Brock, Jr., Georgia TechRanging across a host of new media, Beyond Hashtags places blackness at center of our understanding of digital distribution. In expanding what we think about politics, journalism, and society, Florini honors the expansive network of people working across media platforms to produce discourses around black identity and culture. -- Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern UniversityWell suited for myriad human communication contexts… This is an engaging and accessible look into an often ignored yet painfully important element of the networked century. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association''s Section on Race, Class, and GenderHonorable Mention, 2018 Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association''s Latina/o Sociology SectionHow Latina teachers are making careers and helping students stay in touch with their roots.Latina women make up the fastest growing non-white group entering the teaching profession at a time when it is estimated that 20% of all students nationwide now identify as Latina/o. Through ethnographic and participant observation in two underperforming majority-minority schools in Los Angeles, as well as interviews with teachers, parents and staff, Latina Teachers examines the complexities stemming from a growing workforce of Latina teachers. The teachers profiled use Latino cultural resources and serve as agents of ethnic mobility. They activTrade ReviewGlenda Flores has crafted a milestone study on Latinas in the classroom. Interrogating familiar cultural practices as assets not deficits and Latino parents as allies not obstacles, Professor Flores brings out the 'difference' Latina teachers make in racially diverse schools. Moving well beyond a dialectic of European American teacher and Latino student, she deals with the everyday challenges of diversity with white, Latino, African American, and Asian students, parents, educators, and administrators and the types of coalitions and tensions that evolve along interracial lines. Timely, astute, and heartfelt, Latina Teachers is essential reading. -- Vicki L. Ruiz,author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century AmericaVividly detailed, offering stimulating ethnography and insightful analysis of the quiet but important transformations today underway in the classrooms of Latina teachers. Glenda Flores does not shy away from acknowledging the multiple challenges facing Latino children in U.S. schools, but her focus on Chicana/Latina teachers shines light on the unique contributions and doors that these teachers are opening for Latino children. This book makes significant contributions to the sociology of work, race/ethnicity and occupations, and it is a must read for anyone interested in understanding an asset perspective of Latino education. -- Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo,author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

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Book SynopsisHow local Black and Brown communities can resist gentrification and fight for their interestsDespite promises from politicians, nonprofits, and government agencies, Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods remain plagued by poverty, failing schools, and gang activity. In Building a Better Chicago, Teresa Irene Gonzales shows us how, and why, these promises have gone unfulfilled, revealing tensions between neighborhood residents and the institutions that claim to represent them. Focusing on Little Village, the largest Mexican immigrant community in the Midwest, and Greater Englewood, a predominantly Black neighborhood, Gonzales gives us an on-the-ground look at Chicago's inner city. She shows us how philanthropists, nonprofits, and government agencies struggle for power and controloften against the interests of residents themselveswith the result of further marginalizing the communities of color they seek to help. But Gonzales also shows how these communitTrade ReviewBuilding a Better Chicago is not just about Chicago. Teresa Irene Gonzales speaks to urban community development writ large, uncovering how a core foundational piece of these conversations—trust—marginalizes dissent, invalidates local sentiment, and devalues reasonable concerns over process. Grounded in contemporary policy debates, Building a Better Chicago shows that mistrust is a powerful tool. It might be hard for urban elites to read, but through careful examples and analysis Gonzales shows us how collective skepticism holds value for community organizers—from vouchsafing planning processes to bridging social capital across other neighborhood communities. As a result, this book is a must-read for growth-minded policymakers, scholars of cities, and grassroots urban activists. -- Jonathan Wynn, author of Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and NewportTeresa Gonzales animates a powerful account of how state-actors direct the benefits of urban redevelopment towards White, urban elites and away from communities of color. In that respect, Chicago is like many cities across the United States. However, she shows how 'collective skepticism' allows for productive resistance as Black and Mexican-American residents from low-income communities stake claim to their neighborhoods and their city—forcing their voices and interests to be heard. * Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court *...this case study allows readers to clearly envision the complexity and discord that occur when economically impoverished neighborhoods seek empowerment. * Choice *This book is a prime example of a brilliantly written ethnography that allows the reader to become immersed in the microcosm of urban redevelopment politics in Chicago while raising critical questions about how existing power inequalities can be challenged. * Mobilization *Building a Better Chicago represents a valuable addition to the literatures on neighborhood development, community organizations, and urban activism…The book represents an important source for anyone who wishes to better understand urban politics and neighborhood change in low-income and racialized communities today. * American Sociological Association *This excellent addition to the literature on urban development challenges existing assumptions and invites us all to take Gonzales’s lead and imagine what a better world might look like. * Social Forces Levine Review BaBC *Gonzales makes an important contribution to the literature on the role of institutional stakeholders in the urban redevelopment process. She offers a critique of dominant approaches to neighborhood revitalization that rely on planning strategies that are perceived as top-down by residents and grassroots groups. * Journal of Urban Affairs *Gonzales provides unique insight into how communities can advocate for themselves and demand accountability from politicians and agencies in their midst. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of redevelopment and the tensions that exist between institutional and grassroots organizations within urban revitalization. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisA toolkit for understanding how Asian Americans influence, consume and are reflected by mainstream media. Asian Americans have long been the subject and object of popular culture in the U.S. The rapid circulation of cultural flashpointssuch as the American obsession with K-pop sensations, Bollywood dance moves, and sriracha hot saucehave opened up new ways of understanding how the categories of Asian and Asian American are counterbalanced within global popular culture. Located at the crossroads of these global and national expressions, Global Asian American Popular Cultures highlights new approaches to modern culture, with essays that explore everything from music, film, and television to comics, fashion, food, and sports. As new digital technologies and cross-media convergence have expanded exchanges of transnational culture, Asian American popular culture emerges as a crucial site for understanding how communities share information and how the meanings of mainstTrade ReviewIn a world of increased transnational flows of media, information, and bodies,Global Asian American Popular Culturesis a highly welcome addition to scholarship that is increasingly considering the ways in which Asian America participates in a globalized perspective of identity and culture....With the repeated erasure of Asian American experiences both domestically and globally, the essays in this collection do crucial work in teasing out the ways in which Asian Americans negotiate their position within racialized power structures through their own creative works, mainstream media representation, engagement with their communities, their own familial experiences, and the relatively new digital landscape....This volume opens up conversations about the ways in which Asian American identities cross national borders through transnational flows of culture, thereby infusing the field of Asian American studies with a breath of fresh air. -- Cynthia Wang, California State University, Los Angeles * International Journal of Communication *A welcome and necessary book, Global Asian American Popular Cultures is nothing short of impressive. Working at the very cutting edge of contemporary Asian American cultural studies, the essays collected here are thoughtful and innovative and represent some of the most incisive voices in Asian American studies. An invaluable toolkit for a new generation of thinkers interested in how to do Asian American cultural critique. -- Anita Mannur,co-editor of Eating Asian AmericaThe delightfully diverse depictions of Asians, with pieces that coverEast Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian experiences, contain rich research that elegantly weaves descriptive narratives of subjects lived experiences. * International Journal of Communication *

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Book SynopsisTraces the role of the aggravated felony in today's deportation regimeIn immigration courts across America, a non-citizen convicted of an aggravated felony will almost certainly face deportation with no access to asylum. However, despite the ominous-sounding name, aggravated felonies need not be either aggravated or felonies. The term encompasses more than thirty offenses, ranging from check fraud and shoplifting to filing a false tax return. The recent expansion in the list of such offenses has resulted in astronomical rates of deportation. This book chronicles the rise of the use of the aggravated felony, known by lawyers as the immigration law death penalty, to criminalize and then deport immigrants. Immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies are subject to mandatory detention and almost certain deportationand are ineligible for almost all forms of legal relief from removal. Furthermore, immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies can be detained for months or even years withoutTrade Review"Due to the aggravated felony provisions of US immigration law, a legal permanent resident of the United States convicted of a crime—that is neither severe nor even a felony—can be deported with no due process. Despite the severity of these provisions and the fact that tens of thousands of legal permanent residents have been deported under these provisions, few people have heard of aggravated felonies. This theoretically rich and deeply researched book brings aggravated felony provisions from the shadows to the spotlight. Sarah Tosh makes a cogent case that we need to abolish these racially biased and harmful provisions. This book is indispensable for any student or scholar of immigration or critical race theory. " * Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism *"In immigration law today, there is nothing more harmful to migrants than having ICE throw two words in their direction: aggravated felony. Looking well past the legal arguments, Tosh turns the aggravated felony from a technical legal concept to real-life anxiety. Through immigration court observations and interviews, Tosh shows the damning impact of adding immigration consequences to criminal legal processes, revealing the modern immigration law system’s reliance on criminal history to be rife with bias and short on justice. But through it all, Tosh also finds passionate advocates whose strategic thinking slows ICE’s efforts—and sometimes even carries the day for migrants. " * César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants *"Through extensive interviews and direct observations, Tosh exposes the injustices at the heart of the American deportation regime and the strategies of legal resistance mobilized to resist it. " * Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing *"A powerful and illuminating in-depth examination of the history, politics, and social factors behind the ‘aggravated felony’ legal category. Tosh’s rich analysis deconstructs this invented category, laying bare how it operates as a mechanism to funnel racialized immigrants to deportation. Tosh’s original charting of lawyers’ and advocates’ creative strategies to get around the most detrimental effects of the aggravated felony also seeds hope for pushing back against inherently discriminatory and unjust criminal and immigration laws. Invaluable. " * Nancy Hiemstra, author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime *

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Book SynopsisTraces the role of the aggravated felony in today's deportation regimeIn immigration courts across America, a non-citizen convicted of an aggravated felony will almost certainly face deportation with no access to asylum. However, despite the ominous-sounding name, aggravated felonies need not be either aggravated or felonies. The term encompasses more than thirty offenses, ranging from check fraud and shoplifting to filing a false tax return. The recent expansion in the list of such offenses has resulted in astronomical rates of deportation. This book chronicles the rise of the use of the aggravated felony, known by lawyers as the immigration law death penalty, to criminalize and then deport immigrants. Immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies are subject to mandatory detention and almost certain deportationand are ineligible for almost all forms of legal relief from removal. Furthermore, immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies can be detained for months or even years withoutTrade Review"Due to the aggravated felony provisions of US immigration law, a legal permanent resident of the United States convicted of a crime—that is neither severe nor even a felony—can be deported with no due process. Despite the severity of these provisions and the fact that tens of thousands of legal permanent residents have been deported under these provisions, few people have heard of aggravated felonies. This theoretically rich and deeply researched book brings aggravated felony provisions from the shadows to the spotlight. Sarah Tosh makes a cogent case that we need to abolish these racially biased and harmful provisions. This book is indispensable for any student or scholar of immigration or critical race theory. " * Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism *"In immigration law today, there is nothing more harmful to migrants than having ICE throw two words in their direction: aggravated felony. Looking well past the legal arguments, Tosh turns the aggravated felony from a technical legal concept to real-life anxiety. Through immigration court observations and interviews, Tosh shows the damning impact of adding immigration consequences to criminal legal processes, revealing the modern immigration law system’s reliance on criminal history to be rife with bias and short on justice. But through it all, Tosh also finds passionate advocates whose strategic thinking slows ICE’s efforts—and sometimes even carries the day for migrants. " * César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants *"Through extensive interviews and direct observations, Tosh exposes the injustices at the heart of the American deportation regime and the strategies of legal resistance mobilized to resist it. " * Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing *"A powerful and illuminating in-depth examination of the history, politics, and social factors behind the ‘aggravated felony’ legal category. Tosh’s rich analysis deconstructs this invented category, laying bare how it operates as a mechanism to funnel racialized immigrants to deportation. Tosh’s original charting of lawyers’ and advocates’ creative strategies to get around the most detrimental effects of the aggravated felony also seeds hope for pushing back against inherently discriminatory and unjust criminal and immigration laws. Invaluable. " * Nancy Hiemstra, author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime *

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Book SynopsisUncovers how the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II affected African American Catholics in Atlanta The history and practices of African American Catholics has been vastly understudied, and Black Catholics are often written off as a fringe sector of the religious population. Yet, Catholics of African descent have been a part of Catholicism since the early days of European exploration into the New World. In the Shadow of Ebenezer examines how the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Vatican Council affected African American Catholics in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on the historic Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the Old Fourth Ward. Our Lady of Lourdes is a neighbor of major historic Black Protestant churches in the city, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, a block away, which during the Civil Rights era was the pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. Featuring archival and oral history sources, the book examines the religious and cultural life of the parishioners of Our Lady of LourdesTrade ReviewWell-crafted studies of Black Catholic institutions are rare enough. To have such a study of a Black Catholic parish in Atlanta during the civil rights movement is an occasion for celebration. -- John McGreevy, Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, Notre Dame UniversityUrgent and exciting. Mickens beautifully fills a huge gap in our knowledge of Black Catholicism. -- Diana Hayes, Professor Emerita, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisUncovers how the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II affected African American Catholics in Atlanta The history and practices of African American Catholics has been vastly understudied, and Black Catholics are often written off as a fringe sector of the religious population. Yet, Catholics of African descent have been a part of Catholicism since the early days of European exploration into the New World. In the Shadow of Ebenezer examines how the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Vatican Council affected African American Catholics in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on the historic Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the Old Fourth Ward. Our Lady of Lourdes is a neighbor of major historic Black Protestant churches in the city, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, a block away, which during the Civil Rights era was the pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. Featuring archival and oral history sources, the book examines the religious and cultural life of the parishioners of Our Lady of LourdesTrade ReviewWell-crafted studies of Black Catholic institutions are rare enough. To have such a study of a Black Catholic parish in Atlanta during the civil rights movement is an occasion for celebration. -- John McGreevy, Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, Notre Dame UniversityUrgent and exciting. Mickens beautifully fills a huge gap in our knowledge of Black Catholicism. -- Diana Hayes, Professor Emerita, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisAn artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive cultureIn a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the proper depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionisma representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation.Arguing against the need for positive representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultuTrade Review[C]ompelling. It shows how art can be a powerful instrument for reflecting how a social identity can be made to assume a certain social meaning and how it can be used to question the identity in this way making it malleable to transformation. Anyone interested in identity representation and culture, particularly of an ethnic or racial nature, will find much to inform and challenge them in Harpers tightly argued and well-referenced book. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Opens up possibilities for revising our notions of representation.Abstractionist Aestheticsis a valuable contribution to ongoing conversations about race, politics, and aesthetics. * ASAP/Journal *A riveting polemic on the politics of abstraction in black art. Moving among examples in a range of medialiterature, music, visual art, and filmwith fine-tuned readings,Abstractionist Aestheticsis a devastating critique of the all-too-common presumption that variants of realism are the only effective option for a black art that would respond to the history of racial deprivation. -- Brent Hayes Edwards,author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature,Translation, and the Rise of Black InternationalisBeautifully argued with unexpected twists and turns, Phillip Brian Harper exposes how our prefabricated notions of the sounds, sights, and feeling of blackness dictate our often parochial reactions to artistic efforts to engage and broaden the places assigned to black Americans. A momentous and magnificent book. -- Michael Awkward, Gayl Jones Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture, University of Michigan

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Book SynopsisInsists on the importance of embodiment and movement to the creation of Black socialityLinking African diasporic performance, disability studies, and movement studies, Falling, Floating, Flickering approaches disability transnationally by centering Black, African, and diasporic experiences. By eschewing capital's weighted calculus of which bodies hold value, this book centers alternate morphologies and movement practices that have previously been dismissed as abnormal or unrecognizable. To move beyond binaries of ability, Hershini Bhana Young traverses multiple geohistories and cultural forms stretching from the United States and the Mediterranean to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa, as well as independent and experimental film, novels, sculptures, images, dance, performances, and anecdotes. In doing so, she argues for the importance of differential embodiment and movement to the creation and survival of Black sociality, and refutes stereotypic notioTrade ReviewA stellar work of scholarship. Young is fearless in her questions and generous in her thinking, providing readers with the tools to imagine, critique, and speculate alongside her. She powerfully demonstrates the necessity of reading disability in context and transforms our understandings of disability and performance. * Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip *Falling, Floating, Flickering demonstrates that Black sociality emerges from and can be reconsidered by foregrounding differential embodiment. Throughout the book, moments of tension, moving through rich theoretical ideas and difficult lived and performed embodiments, are followed by moments of relief, where Hershini Bhana Young offers not simply places to rest, but places to be invigorated. Reading this work is incredibly pleasurable, and I am grateful for its clarity and capaciousness. * Keguro Macharia, author of Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora *

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Book SynopsisInsists on the importance of embodiment and movement to the creation of Black socialityLinking African diasporic performance, disability studies, and movement studies, Falling, Floating, Flickering approaches disability transnationally by centering Black, African, and diasporic experiences. By eschewing capital's weighted calculus of which bodies hold value, this book centers alternate morphologies and movement practices that have previously been dismissed as abnormal or unrecognizable. To move beyond binaries of ability, Hershini Bhana Young traverses multiple geohistories and cultural forms stretching from the United States and the Mediterranean to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa, as well as independent and experimental film, novels, sculptures, images, dance, performances, and anecdotes. In doing so, she argues for the importance of differential embodiment and movement to the creation and survival of Black sociality, and refutes stereotypic notioTrade ReviewA stellar work of scholarship. Young is fearless in her questions and generous in her thinking, providing readers with the tools to imagine, critique, and speculate alongside her. She powerfully demonstrates the necessity of reading disability in context and transforms our understandings of disability and performance. * Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip *Falling, Floating, Flickering demonstrates that Black sociality emerges from and can be reconsidered by foregrounding differential embodiment. Throughout the book, moments of tension, moving through rich theoretical ideas and difficult lived and performed embodiments, are followed by moments of relief, where Hershini Bhana Young offers not simply places to rest, but places to be invigorated. Reading this work is incredibly pleasurable, and I am grateful for its clarity and capaciousness. * Keguro Macharia, author of Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora *

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Book SynopsisNearly a week after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, President Obama walked into the press briefing room and shocked observers by saying that Trayvon could have been me. He talked personally and poignantly about his experiences and pointed to intra-racial violence as equally serious and precarious for black boys. He offered no sweeping policy changes or legislative agendas; he saw them as futile. Instead, he suggested that prejudice would be eliminated through collective efforts to help black males and for everyone to reflect on their own prejudices. Obama's presidency provides a unique opportunity to engage in a discussion about race and politics. In The Race Whisperer, Melanye Price analyzes the manner in which Barack Obama uses race strategically to engage with and win the loyalty of potential supporters. This book uses examples from Obama's campaigns and presidency to demonstrate his ability to authentically tap into notions of blackness and whiteneTrade Review"In this book, Melanye Price masterfully explores the many ways in which the first black president, Barack Obama, navigated the complexities of racenot only as a politician but also as a candidate. The books success lies in Prices ability to peel back the layers of racial significance within President Obamas rhetorical approaches[Prices] work is extremely impressive." * Critical Dialogues *"Price has written a wonderfully rich treatment of President Barack Obamas rhetoric and his usages of race. It is a highly critical, yet restrained analysis of his presidency. This book invites readers to think closely about how politicians, especially African American politicians, use race in American national politics. More importantly, it serves as guidebook for African American voters and how they might assess the use of race in political rhetoric and discourse." -- Randal Maurice Jelks,author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of The Movement: A Biography"With The Race Whisperer Melanye Price has helped decode one of the most enigmatic and complex dynamics of the Obama Presidency." -- W. Jelani Cobb,author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress"[Price's] analysis shines new light on the price paid for black silence. If Obama is the model for black politicians going forward, how can they deliver more than symbolic benefit to black voters?" * The Historian *

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Book SynopsisA powerful history of student protests and student rights during the desegregation eraIn the late 1960s, protests led by students roiled high schools across the country. As school desegregation finally took place on a wide scale, students of color were particularly vocal in contesting the racial discrimination they saw in school policies and practices. And yet, these young people had no legal right to express dissent at school. It was not until 1969 that the Supreme Court would recognize the First Amendment rights of students in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case. A series of students' rights lawsuits in the desegregation era challenged everything from school curricula to disciplinary policies. But in casting students as troublemakers or as culturally deficient, school authorities and other experts persuaded the courts to set limits on rights protections that made students of color disproportionately vulnerable to suspension and expulsion. Troublemakers traces the history of blacTrade ReviewThose who associate student protest only with institutions of higher education will find this work enlightening. Schumaker makes a compelling case that from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, high school students in several states were instrumental in redefining students' constitutional rights. Using the "lens of race," she focuses on how these protests propelled racial reform in different school systems. -- Choice

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Book SynopsisA curious figure stalks the pages of a distinct subset of mass-market romance novels, aptly called desert romances. Animalistic yet sensitive, dark and attractive, the desert prince or sheikh emanates manliness and raw, sexual power. In the years since September 11, 2001, the sheikh character has steadily risen in popularity in romance novels, even while depictions of Arab masculinity as backward and violent in nature have dominated the cultural landscape. An Imperialist Love Story contributes to the broader conversation about the legacy of orientalist representations of Arabs in Western popular culture. Combining close readings of novels, discursive analysis of blogs and forums, and interviews with authors, Jarmakani explores popular investments in the war on terror by examining the collisions between fantasy and reality in desert romances. Focusing on issues of security, freedom, and liberal multiculturalism, she foregrounds the role that desire plays in contemporary formations of U.Trade Review"Jarmakanis monograph is of particular interest to feminist literary scholars, especially those working with romance novels and/or with post-9/11 fiction." * Feminist Theory *"An Imperialist Love Story is a cutting edge piece of scholarship, exploring the fascinating tension between a resurgence in popular desert romances at a cultural moment in which Arab masculinity is understood as violent and threatening. Offering a radical reinterpretation of the power of mass-market engagements with the Middle East,Jarmakanianalyzes the role that fantasy and desire play in the construction of U.S. imperialism. Beautifully written and enjoyable to read, this book will generate debate in many different circles, for many years to come." -- Sarah Gualtieri,author of Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora"Jarmarkani investigates & desert romances, i.e., pulp novels set in an imagined & Arabiastan and prominently featuring a sheikh or prince who is powerfully virile yet deeply sensitive and gratifyingly susceptible to the charms of the Western heroine." * Choice *Table of ContentsContents Preface vii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: The Romantic Sheikh as Hero of the War on Terror 1 1. "To Catch a Sheikh" in the War on Terror 43 2.DesertIs Just Another Word for Freedom 79 3. Desiring the Big Bad Blade: The Racialization of the Sheikh 117 4. To Make a Woman Happy in Bed ... 155 Conclusion: The Ends 189 Notes197 Bibliography241 Index257 About the Author267

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Book SynopsisExplores how humanitarian aid workers help and hinder the care of unaccompanied children as they arrive in the United StatesEvery year, tens of thousands of children cross into the United States without a legal guardian at their side, often fleeing violence and poverty in their countries of origin. In Unaccompanied, Emily Ruehs-Navarro shows us one aspect of their heartbreaking journeys, as seen through the eyes of the aid workers who trybut too often failto help them. Drawing on interviews with aid workers, migrant children, and others, Ruehs-Navarro follows unaccompanied youth as they seek help from a wide range of professionals. From legal relief organizations to family reunification specialists, she shows us how different aid workers may choose to work for, with, or against unaccompanied immigrant youth, deciding whether they should be treated as refugees, child dependents, or, in some cases, criminals. Ruehs-Navarro highlights how aid workers, anTrade Review"Emily Ruehs-Navarro takes us on a compelling sociological journey that maps out what drives youth to migrate by themselves and what they encounter when they arrive at the U.S border. Using multiple qualitative methods, she illuminates the ways in which border securitization, racialized child welfare, and humanitarianism intersect to shape how we think of and respond to unaccompanied migrant youth. Integrating the experiences and perspectives of both youth and the professionals who work with them, this valuable book brings into focus the complex landscape of aid they operate in and the contradictions and possibilities they navigate to access aid. " -- Lorena Garcia, author of Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity"This work is important because it demonstrates the conditional nature of humanitarian legal aid toward youth and highlights the continued traumatization of youth even after crossing the border." * Sociology of Race of Ethnicity *

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Studies!Explores Black representation in fantasy genres and comic booksCharacters like Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, Miles Morales, and Black Lightning are part of a growing cohort of black superheroes on TV and in film. Though comic books are often derided as naïve and childish, these larger-than-life superheroes demonstrate how this genre can serve as the catalyst for engaging the Black radical imagination.Keeping It Unreal: Comics and Black Queer Fantasy is an exploration of how fantasies of Black power and triumph fashion theoretical, political, and aesthetic challenges toand respite fromwhite supremacy and anti-Blackness. It examines representations of Blackness in fantasy-infused genres: superhero comic books, erotic comics, fantasy and science-fiction genre literature, as well as contemporary literary realist fiction centering fantastic conceits.Darieck Scott offers a rich meditTrade ReviewScott reflects on the importance of fantasy in comic books in this brisk and insightful meditation ... this analysis is rich and rewarding. * Publishers Weekly *This fabulously written reconsideration of fantasy goes beyond readings of Black queer comics to reveal the value of becoming fantastical—of living in a ‘habitable imaginary’ where dreams are substantiated. I came looking for insights about Luke Cage and Black Panther . . . only to find liberation and Black queer life. * Jennifer Brody, Stanford University *A primer in counter-intuition and bold imagination that dares to embrace the radical possibility of black happiness. Writing with razor-sharp wit and blistering erudition, Scott rewrites the meaning of fantasy to reveal its power as an intellectual and political tool for reimagining blackness beyond an antiblack world. His captivating excavations of black fantasy in the comic genre provide not only a space of pleasure and possibility, but a tool for living a different kind of black futurity. * Tina Campt, Brown University *Scott does an amazing job in the conclusion of providing some context as well as personal revelation, that allows the reader to feel like they too are part of this conversation and creation…Overall, Scott’s Keeping it Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics is a well-constructed engagement of various scholarly sources in the understanding and construction of ourselves, of others, and of life through the use of fantasy. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *In Keeping It Unreal, Scott doubles down on his belief that even in a whitewashed landscape, Black comic book heroes and their influence warp the foundation of how the industry operates, whether seen in superheroes or in porn. Ultimately, as a powerful reflection of the Black body’s identity, he argues that within these fantasy-acts lies a deep-rooted recognition of Black humanity that cannot be erased or denied. * Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society *

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Book SynopsisUtilizes Brown's life to illuminate the concept of freedom as it developed in the United States in the early national and antebellum yearsTrade Review"With this meticulously sourced and carefully reasoned portrait, Armstead reclaims an outstanding American who helped freedom grow." * Booklist *"Armstead explores the meaning of northern African American identity through her deft decoding of a ten-volume diary left by James F. Brown...Recommended for historians of antebellum America or the social aspects of horticulture and for those interested in historical diaries. Incipient researchers will learn the differences among term, life, and wage slaves and much else" * Library Journal *"Overall, this is an informative study of antebellum New York State." -- R. Douglas Hurt * New York History *"An enlightening examination of a period of American history that seems to have slipped from public scrutiny...Armstead's review of the status of American horticulture during the first half of the nineteenth century makes this volume intriguing reading for gardeners." -- Marilyn K. Alaimo * Chicago Botanic Garden *"Myra Young Armstead brings to life James Brown, a self-possessed African American citizen of the pre-Civil War United States, and gives us anew understanding of the meaning of freedom in antebellum America. As a master gardener in rural upstate New York, James Brown charted a life of complex alliances across racial lines and advocacy on behalf of fellow African Americans. Armstead's wonderful work of recovery illuminates a path to freedom in the rural North that we have known little about." * Leslie M. Harris, Emory University *"This is far more than a book about a gardener though it is a fascinating story about nineteenth-century American horticulture. Freedom's Gardener tells us about the opportunities and limits that framed the lives of African Americans in places like New York's Hudson Valley. And a good read to boot." * James Grossman, University of Chicago *"Freedom's Gardener is an excellent example of how historians can transform one person's life into a story that illustrates the larger picture for both scholars and a broader audience." * Journal of American History *"Freedom's Gardener is beautifully researched, bursting with detail." * The New York Times *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. LIFE AS A SLAVE 1.What Can a Man Do? 2.Into the Promised Land Part II. FREE MAN AND FREE LABORER 3.A Horticultural Community 4. A Gardening Career 5. Cultural Meanings of Gardening 6. Escaping Wage Slavery Part III. FREE MAN AND CITIZEN 7. A Whiggish Sensibility 8. James F. Brown, Voting Rights Politics, and Antislavery Activism 9. The Informal Politics of Association Conclusion Notes About the Author

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2020 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre ResearchArgues that Ricanness operates as a continual performance of bodily endurance against US colonialismIn 1954, Dolores Lolita Lebrón and other members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party led a revolutionary action on the chambers of Congress, firing several shots at the ceiling and calling for the independence of the island. Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance begins with Lebrón's vanguard act, distilling the relationship between Puerto Rican subjectivity, gender, sexuality, and revolutionary performance under colonial time. Ruiz argues that Ricannessa continual performance of bodily endurance against US colonialism through different measures of timeuncovers what's at stake politically for the often unwanted, anticolonial, racialized and sexualized enduring body. Moving among theatre, experimental video, revolutionary protest, phTrade ReviewRuiz’s relentless pressure on how fields of knowledge depend upon spatial containment eviscerates the collusion between epistemology and place. Her dazzling intellectualism models the necessarily daring edges one must seek out in discussions about aesthetics and politics. This beautifully written book encourages the demands of nonlinear thinking, the challenging pleasures of scholarship, and offers a more expansive sense of what activism can be. Ricanness is erudition for the people. -- Alexandra T. Vazquez, author of Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban MusicRicanness accomplishes a sustained dislocation of the hierarchies of the senses. It is an ontology of life and death, mixed with lipstick, champagne, sweat, vulgarity, and survival. It is a poetics of time and temporality. This poetics is worked out phenomenologically, aesthetically, and politically through the uncompromising stance Ruiz takes toward the violent history echoing across the unbroken Rican spirit. -- Tavia Nyong'o, author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life[Ruiz] uses the example of Puerto Rico to push theory forward—challenging it, extending it, upending it. * Choice *At once challenging and generous, forcefully-argued and nuanced, Ruiz’s work demonstrates how endurance, suspension, and waiting characterize Rican subjectivities, and how aesthetic performance both reveals and confronts the colonial (and postcolonial) logics that inform these subjectivities. * Social Text *In shifting away from more traditional disciplinary approaches that have pervaded the field from its beginnings, Ricanness [...] turned to the promise of the aesthetic in order to understand and move beyond the confines of political discourse that limits resistance to the realm of grand political acts. * Latino Studies *Sandra Ruiz pushes us to consider how Puerto Ricans are not only forced to constantly endure subjection and violence, but also how they cultivate an existence that punctures, even if only momentarily, the stranglehold of colonialism on their lives and deaths. In Ricanness, death becomes an insurgent force under the restrictive time and limited horizon imposed by colonial rule. * Centro Journal *Ruiz’s book is groundbreaking as she skillfully weaves together philosophy (specifically phenomenology and existentialism), performance studies, psychoanalysis, gender and queer studies, and Puerto Rican studies, to address major blind spots in each of these fields. * Women & Performance *Ruiz’s expertly wound theoretical frame unfurls itself in her sumptuous close readings. Moving roughly chronologically while capturing alternate time looping under coloniality, she analyzes performance across media, including photography, political protest, durational performance art, plays, poetry, and experimental video. * Theatre Journal *A profoundly necessary and timely book ... Though her book focuses on Ricans in the diaspora, her theorization of alternative ways of being through anticolonial performance is not bound by colonially imposed borders between here (US) and there (Puerto Rico) ... Ricanness offers so much not only to the fields of performance studies and Puerto Rican studies, but also to Ricans like me, Ricans wanting “a relational way to imagine, dream, and construct alternate forms of living under colonialism, across bodies of water. * The Drama Review *Ruiz complicates the conventional gendered connotations of masculinized impotence and/or endurance by reading these states through the framework of colonial/national personhood. Throughout the book, Ruiz underscores how many performances of Ricanness entail a reckoning with gendered violence and a confrontation with the unfulfilled and violent promises of redemptive masculinities ... In inviting us to appreciate the aesthetic as a politic, and to understand Rican survival as an artful and embodied working upon an unending loop in colonial time, Ruiz invigorates Latinx studies engagements with performance and provides us with theories we can use to situate further performances of Ricanness. * American Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThe third edition of the foundational volume in Asian American studiesWho are Asian Americans? Moving beyond popular stereotypes of the model minority or forever foreigner, most Americans know surprisingly little of the nation's fastest growing minority population. Since the 1960s, when different Asian immigrant groups came together under the Asian American umbrella, they have tirelessly carved out their presence in the labor market, education, politics, and pop culture. Many times, they have done so in the face of racism, discrimination, sexism, homophobia, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Today, contemporary Asian America has emerged as an incredibly diverse population, with each segment of the community facing its unique challenges. When Contemporary Asian America was first published in 2000, it exposed its readers to the formation and development of Asian American studies as an academic field of study, from its inception as part of the ethnic consciousness movement of the 1960s toTrade ReviewBrings together some of the most important scholarship in Asian American Studies. Contemporary Asian America is a superbly organized anthology, presenting topics ranging from immigration, family, and community to activism, identity, sexuality, race relations and transnationalism. The new research and updated materials on previously understudied Asian ethnic groups are most valuable. Anyone interested in the experiences of Asians in the United States will find much here that is illuminating. The breadth and depth of this volume makes it an excellent reader for undergraduate and graduate level courses in Asian American Studies. -- Xiaojian Zhao,University of California, Santa BarbaraA thoughtfully assembled collection of readings that carefully brings together central themes in Asian American Studies. A great resource for those looking for a lively introduction to the field. -- Nazli Kibria,Boston University

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2018 Section on Asia and Asian America Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association Traces the religious adaptation of members of an important Indian Christian church the Mar Thoma denomination as they make their way in the United States. This book exposes how a new paradigm of ethnicity and religion, and the megachurch phenomenon, is shaping contemporary immigrant religious institutions, specifically Indian American Christianity. Kurien draws on multi-site research in the US and India to provide a global perspective on religion by demonstrating the variety of ways that transnational processes affect religious organizations and the lives of members, both in the place of destination and of origin. The widespread prevalence of megachurches and the dominance of American evangelicalism created an environment in which the traditional practices of the ancient South Indian Mar Thoma denomination seemed alien to its American-born generation. Many of the young adults lTrade Review"Like Prema Kuriens previous books, this one is thoroughly researched, tackling a huge topic with impressive scholarship. And it poses an unsettling question: Is a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it version of Christianity the wave of the future? Or is America big enough to embrace a growing multiplicity of ethno-religious traditions?" -- Robert Wuthnow,Princeton University"Though rooted in analysis of Mar Thoma, Kuriens work provides a useful theoretical language for thinking about big-picture immigration trends. As such, this book is a must read for those interested in immigration, migration, and transnationalism broadly as well as religion." * Choice *"It is continually amazing that immigrants’ religious lives have not received more attention within the sociology of immigration. Prema Kurien’s latest book, Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch, takes on a key topic within the sociology of immigration and of religion — namely, how immigrants across generations form religious belonging both with and separate from the mainstream… Overall, Kurien’s book furthers the case that religion serves as an agent, not merely a context or setting, and can be a central vehicle through which to study immigration." -- International Migration Review"Kurien’s Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch supplies the field with an important sociological account of the transnational religious and ethnic contestations within the Mar Thoma church, a Syrian Christian church based in Kerala. Her extensive ethnographic research, dating back to 1999, is a refreshingly data-rich study that is longitudinally oriented in its inclusion of the extensive history of the Mar Thoma church since its inception in the early decades of the Christian era. It is also a geographically cross-sectional study in its attention to the transnational intersections between the Mar Thoma church in India and in the United States. Kurien’s data reveals that research on religion and ethnicity in the United States must account for generational differences and specific nuances of a particular ethnic denomination’s negotiations in multicultural America." -- Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies"The book illustrates the immense payoff of a transnational, global approach for understanding the movements of religion and people. Many works focus on transnationalism to be sure, but this book convincingly shows why it is an absolute necessity. Such an approach over many years of study provides us a rich tale of change and causality." * American Journal of Sociology *"Kurien has produced a readable, fascinating book about ethnicity, gender, and religion ‘in motion.’ She draws on a rich body of interview data to explore the contentious relationships that shape and re-shape the global, diasporic faith-based communities… As always, Kurien adopts a sophisticated approach to transnationalism that highlights the back and forth direction of change and that recognizes the longue duree of globalization. Most importantly, she shows social changes wrought by immigration are always, if only partly, a matter of immigrant agency." -- Sociology of Religion"Many Americans miss the significant presence of Indian Christians who worship in immigrant ethnic faith communities or in predominantly white evangelical ones that often rely on their presence to promote their racially-inclusive vision. Kurien provides a fascinating look into this overlooked community, insightfully revealing the challenges of recreating a religious culture thousands of miles from its origin, adapting to an increasingly global and diasporic community, and retaining among the second-generation an identity with a religious culture that appears backward and insular compared to its bigger, flashier, and more racially integrated counterpart. An absolute must-read." -- Jerry Z. Park,Associate Professor of Sociology, Baylor University"With careful fieldwork done over decades in two countries, Prema Kuriens work will serve as a model for how to do sociological and ethnographic work within immigrant communities that remain in robust connection to their countries of origin, even as they try to find their footing in their new home. A must read for all who seek to understand the transformation of American religious life under the pressures of migration and globalization!" -- John J. Thatamanil,Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions, Union Theological Seminary

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Book SynopsisThe third edition of the foundational volume in Asian American studiesWho are Asian Americans? Moving beyond popular stereotypes of the model minority or forever foreigner, most Americans know surprisingly little of the nation's fastest growing minority population. Since the 1960s, when different Asian immigrant groups came together under the Asian American umbrella, they have tirelessly carved out their presence in the labor market, education, politics, and pop culture. Many times, they have done so in the face of racism, discrimination, sexism, homophobia, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Today, contemporary Asian America has emerged as an incredibly diverse population, with each segment of the community facing its unique challenges. When Contemporary Asian America was first published in 2000, it exposed its readers to the formation and development of Asian American studies as an academic field of study, from its inception as part of the ethnic consciousness movement of the 1960s toTrade ReviewBrings together some of the most important scholarship in Asian American Studies. Contemporary Asian America is a superbly organized anthology, presenting topics ranging from immigration, family, and community to activism, identity, sexuality, race relations and transnationalism. The new research and updated materials on previously understudied Asian ethnic groups are most valuable. Anyone interested in the experiences of Asians in the United States will find much here that is illuminating. The breadth and depth of this volume makes it an excellent reader for undergraduate and graduate level courses in Asian American Studies. -- Xiaojian Zhao,University of California, Santa BarbaraA thoughtfully assembled collection of readings that carefully brings together central themes in Asian American Studies. A great resource for those looking for a lively introduction to the field. -- Nazli Kibria,Boston University

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Book SynopsisIn the decades leading up to the end of U.S. slavery, many free Blacks sat for daguerreotypes decorated in fine garments to document their self-possession. People pictured in these early photographs used portraiture to seize control over representation of the free Black body and reimagine Black visuality divorced from the cultural logics of slavery. In Picture Freedom, Jasmine Nichole Cobb analyzes the ways in which the circulation of various images prepared free Blacks and free Whites for the emancipation of formerly unfree people of African descent. She traces the emergence of Black freedom as both an idea and as an image during the early nineteenth century. Through an analysis of popular culture of the periodincluding amateur portraiture, racial caricatures, joke books, antislavery newspapers, abolitionist materials, runaway advertisements, ladies' magazines, and scrapbooks, as well as scenic wallpaperCobb explores the earliest illustrations of free Blacks and rTrade ReviewPicture Freedom provides a unique and nuanced interpretation of nineteenth-century African American life and culture. Focusing on visuality, print culture, and an examination of the parlor, Cobb has fashioned a book like none other, convincingly demonstrating how whites and blacks reimagined racial identity and belonging in the early republic. -- Erica Armstrong Dunbar,author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum CityBeautifully written and theoretically sophisticated,Picture Freedomis an absolute gem in its engagement with nineteenth-century visual culture, black subjectivity, and representations of freedom. Through exciting archival work that brings to light a stunning photographic history, Cobb centers black women in the history of nineteenth-century visual culture as consumers and producers of ideas and images of emancipation. One of the books most significant contributions is its astute theorization of the relationship between photographic practices, black interiority, and public culture. I love this book! -- Nicole R. Fleetwood,author of Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and BlacknessThis notion of the domesticated in its most politicized registercitizenshipis at stakePicture Freedom: Cobb reminds us in ways both telling and unforgiving that & Black freedom is not Black citizenship. * Journal of American History *This is a book that will become one of the most influential sources for African American visual culture. * Winterthur Portfolio *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Parlor Fantasies, Parlor Nightmares 1 1 "A Peculiarly 'Ocular' Institution" 28 2 Optics of Respectability: Women, Vision, and the Black Private Sphere 66 3 "Look! A Negress": Public Women, Private Horrors, and the White Ontology of the Gaze 111 4 Racial Iconography: Freedom and Black Citizenship in the Antebellum North 148 5 Racing the Transatlantic Parlor: Blackness at Home and Abroad 193 Epilogue: The Specter of Black Freedom 221 Notes 225 Index 257 About the Author 265 Color images appear as an insert following page 110

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture AssociationWinner, 2021 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award, given by the Association of Internet ResearchersAn explanation of the digital practices of the Black Internet From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places Blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a clTrade Review"In the early days of the internet, much consternation was expressed over the digital divide, the conviction that low-income people, especially African Americans, were missing out on the tech revolution. This concern was rooted in a view of African Americans as uninformed, inert vessels needing to be filled with “authoritative” information. Brock provides a bracing corrective to this limited perception, noting the creative, even transgressive uses African Americans make of the web and social media as opposed to the “productive” usages urged by white technocrats ... He questions the claim that internet browsers and search tools are color-blind, pointing out that neither search results nor marketing patterns are race neutral ... It is on Black Twitter that significant community conversations and information-sharing now take place, amplifying Black political power (think #BlackLivesMatter) but also facilitating cultural conversations and connections ... enlightening." * STARRED Booklist *"An interdisciplinary and multimodal work critical to any scholar researching race and technology and the ways these two seemingly distinct categories are inextricably intertwined. Brock seamlessly ties together rigorous linguistic work with internet and computational studies through the critical techno-cultural discourse analysis (CTDA) lens, which gives readers a cultural and racial framework for our analyses of technology. He calls for researchers to stop only studying the intersections of race and technology by virtue of absence, deficit, and/or resistance. “Racism,” Brock writes, “is not the sole defining characteristic of Black identity.” […] Distributed Blackness is primarily a call for joy." * Media Industries *"In a much-needed addition to digital studies, Distributed Blackness centers Black Internet users in its analysis and emphasizes how they share the joys of their everyday lives online ... a valuable contribution that will certainly enrich future scholarship on both Black and mainstream Internet culture." * Communication Booknotes Quarterly *"Distributed Blackness offers a valuable take on Black online identity—a much needed one, at that, given the lack of focused research on the topic ... Relevant and timely; I believe it will be a staple in research on African American identity and will generate much conversation in the years to follow." * Iperstoria *"Distributed Blackness is required reading. No one understands how technologies of race and the digital must be framed and reimagined right now better than André Brock. This book disrupts and defines the tremendous expanse and range of Blackness on the internet, and will make anyone who thinks they know the history of the web reconsider. While the problems of race and racism on the internet are inescapable, Brock helps us re-center joy, power, love, and resistance too." -- Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism"A brilliant, theoretically rigorous, witty, joyful, and full-throated analysis of black digital culture and infrastructure. Grounded in the black intellectual tradition and modeling a new path for digital media theory, every page offers important new frameworks and formations for understanding how race makes and is made by technology. This is the definitive book on Black Twitter." -- Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan"A timely and lively intervention in our understanding of Blackness in the digital age. André Brock historicizes and theorizes Black life with careful attention to the fullness of both digitality and Blackness. A necessary addition for anyone thinking about race, intersectionality, communications, or the internet." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom, author if Thick and Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationWinner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature AssociationWinner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesArgues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the humanRewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the EnlighteTrade ReviewThis is a demanding, complex, and highly significant contribution to the literature on the nature of the moral and philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman creatures...The implications for theological anthropology are, undoubtedly, shattering. * Literature and Theology *Within Western philosophy, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson shows, Black people historically have been 'animalized.' In examining these limitations of Western philosophy, Becoming Human shows that the fundamental idea of 'humanity' that has gained widespread credence in the West is flawed … Jackson makes an intervention by firmly placing Black literary and visual culture into philosophy. * Public Books *Jackson’s scholarship has been critical to my recent curatorial work. This groundbreaking book considers how Blackness can coincide with notions of the nonhuman and animality through imaginative and emancipatory modes of being, invoking a future that breaches contemporary ideas of humanism through thoughtful research and cultural references that center Black women as a site of origin. * Artforum, "Best of 2021" *Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism [...] What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of 'the human. * Black Perspectives *Jackson states that real change will require “revolutionizing” the human body, and her prescription for freeing oneself from the limitations of gender and species requires the same “plasticity" by which Blackness and anti-Blackness continue to be defined. * CHOICE *The book presents a compelling argument and offers worthwhile suggestions. I will certainly have my undergraduates wrestle with some of this material in upcoming semesters. * Religions Journal *The sheer beauty, force, and ingenuity of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's aesthetic strategies and gestures are on display as she performs the very risks and rewards she conjures. Offering a brilliant intervention into questions of the human, each of Jackson’s readings profoundly unsettle our presumed relations and prevailing ontologies. She reads western philosophy and science through African diasporic literatures, theories, and visual art to open us up to what is made—what might be made—in excess of the matrix of antiblackness and its constitutive forms of the human, animal, gender, and matter. In the book’s range of knowledges, reach, and scope, no field nor discipline would not benefit from a real and sustained engagement with the work that Jackson undertakes here. -- Christina Sharpe, author of In the WakeBrilliantly reframes the relation between blackened life and the category of the human, by shifting the terms of the debate. She maintains that neither dehumanization nor exclusion are sufficient to explain antiblackness and its descending scale of life. In so doing, Jackson's ‘ontological plasticity’ reveals the controlled depletion that produces the liquidity of life and fleshly existence, and enables blackened life to be anything, which is also to say nothing at all. Jackson’s rigorous and sustained meditation is relentless in exploring the possibilities for a generative disordering of being, inhabiting other senses of the world, and imagining the field of relation in ceaseless flux and directionless becoming. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

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Book SynopsisThe history of Latina/o participation and representation in American televisionWhose stories are told on television? Who are the heroes and heroines, held up as intriguing, lovable, and compelling? Which characters are fully realized, rather than being cardboard villains and sidekicks? And who are our storytellers? The first-ever account of Latino/a participation and representation in US English-language television, Latino TV: A History offers a sweeping study of key moments of Chicano/a and Latino/a representation and authorship since the 1950s. Drawing on archival research, interviews with dozens of media professionals who worked on or performed in these series, textual analysis of episodes and promotional materials, and analysis of news media coverage, Mary Beltrán examines Latina/o representation in everything from children's television Westerns of the 1950s, Chicana/o and Puerto Rican activist-led public affairs series of the 1970s, and sitcoms that spTrade ReviewMary Beltrán weaves discussions of Mexican-American and Latina/o representation with those of authorship to produce a compelling and overdue account of how much we truly owe Latina/o creative professionals. Beautifully researched, this book is mandatory reading for scholars of race, media, and representation. * Dolores Inés Casillas, author of Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy *Mary Beltrán’s archival research recovers a history that is essential to understanding the ways in which television culture is always in conversation with the social, political, and economic context in which it is produced. Her insightful analysis shows us why storytelling is ultimately about access to power and the social status of politically marginalized communities in the United States. * Isabel Molina-Guzmán, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign *Beltrán’s Latino TV is an essential contribution to the expanding scholarship on Latina/o/x media and is particularly important for the training of its future scholars. * Film Quarterly *[Beltrán] expertly unveils the ways in which the economic conditions, the stereotyped assumptions of the audience, and barriers to entry limit and contain Latina/o representation... The strength of Beltrán’s research is in the political and cultural contexts that frame how any individual program fits as part of a broader ideological project. * Journal of Arizona History *

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Book SynopsisReveals the dark underside of environmental privilegeTrade ReviewThe authors...make a convincing and highly disturbing case about how some of the nation's most prominent promoters of sustainability depend on the labor of immigrants to enjoy privileged lives amidst a lovely environment. * In These Times *Documents, observation, and interview material over a number of years combine to give a full picture of the situation...the book's rich background of Aspen and the whole state's history is nicely provided, and the interesting flow of history and people's everday lives make Slums of Aspen very accessible. * American Journal of Sociology *Two barrels of leftist buckshot, aimed at America's ruling class. -- Ted Conover,author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing and Whiteout: Lost in AspenAs Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow make clear, we cant tackle todays environmental problems without simultaneously solving social ones. The Slums of Aspen is a must read for all of us who want not just a green and healthy economy, but also a fair and just one. -- Annie Leonard,Author and Host, The Story of StuffAs the limits to growth discourse gains currency, Park and Pellows groundbreaking book is a must-read. Tracing the nativism that has bedeviled the environmental movement for decades, they tell the fascinating story of eco-conscious, upscale Aspen, which was gripped by anti-immigrant fervor in the name of 'saving the planet.' A great addition for courses on environment, race, class, social activism and contemporary problems. -- Juliet Schor,Boston College, and author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't NeedIts the perfect text to look at the intersection between social and environmental issues. -- Marci Krivonen * Aspen Public Radio *A pair of sociologists, in their new book, paint a damning picture of the stark inequalities between local immigrant laborers and Aspen vacationers and the wealthy homeowners they serve. -- Andrew Travers * Aspen Daily News *Park and Pellow offer a blistering critique of environmental privilege and immigrant discrimination within the Rocky Mountains' elite playground of Aspen, Colorado...their argument effectively extends well beyond Aspen's ski slopes and elite shopping streets. -- M.M. Gunter Jr. * Choice *The Slums of Aspentouches a wide variety of important topics both inside and outside the subdiscipline of environmental sociology. It takes long-lasting debates about population growth and examines them anew. It should be of interest to scholars in social movements, race, labor studies, political sociology, leisure studies, to name a few. Its main strength is that it engages so many different, and new areas, of environmental justice, and most importantly, provides a big step forward toward understanding the causes and consequences of environmental privilege, as well as the struggles by some to oppose its racially motivated 'green' politics. -- Justin Farrell * Mobilization *A brilliant, darkly funny expose of Aspen, the ruling classes' green utopia, and the invisible, scorned immigrant labor that makes it all possible. -- Mike Davis,author of Magical Urbanism and No One is Illegal[Park and Pellow] provide an impactful account of a wealthy Colorado community's attempt to limit the number of immigrants in their neighborhoods and their reasoning for doing so: environmental protection. * The National Memo *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Environmental Privilege in the Rocky Mountains 1 The Logic of Aspen 2 The Ultimate Elite Retreat 3 Living in Someone Else's Paradise 4 Nativism and the Environmental Movement 5 Advocacy and Social Justice Workers Conclusion: Dreams of Privilege/Visions of Justice Notes on Research Methods Notes References Index About the Authors

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Book SynopsisProvides compelling and manageable solutions for how to reform the criminal justice system from the inside out A racial reckoning in the US criminal justice system was long overdue well before the highly publicized murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others in 2020. Progressive Prosecution argues that prosecutors, having helped build our failed system of mass incarceration, must now lead the charge to dismantle it.With contributions from practicing district attorneys as well as leading scholars in the fields of law and criminal justice, Taylor-Thompson and Thompson's volume offers an unapologetically ambitious vision for reform. The contributors draw from empirical evidence and years of combined research experience to argue that change must happen at the local level, with prosecutors choosing to adopt race-conscious approaches. These prosecutors must do the hard work themselves, actively focusing on the ways that race misshapes perceptions of

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Book SynopsisAn engaging ethnography of Korean American immigrant families navigating the United States Both scholarship and popular culture on Asian American immigrant families have long focused on intergenerational cultural conflict and stereotypes about tiger mothers and model minority students. This book turns the tables on the conventional imagination of the Asian American immigrant family, arguing that, in fact, families are often on the same page about the challenges and difficulties navigating the U.S.'s racialized landscape. The book draws on a survey with over 200 Korean American teens and over one hundred parents to provide context, then focusing on the stories of five families with young adults in order to go in-depth, and shed light on today's dynamics in these families. The book argues that Korean American immigrant parents and their children today are thinking in shifting ways about how each member of the family can best succeed in the U.S. Rather than being marked by a generationalTrade Review"Conventional or stereotypical discourse surrounding Asian American families, Korean Americans in particular, in both popular and scholarly literature indicates that immigrant parents, even at the sacrifice of their own future, pressure their children to be successful academically or professionally while ignoring other aspects of their children’s growth … Okazaki and Abelmann's research reveals a very different picture from that simplified portrait of Korean Americans." -- Choice"In this must-read book, Okazaki and Abelman rigorously capture portraits of how Korean American immigrant parents and their childrenmake family work. These vivid portraits provide stereotype-breaking depictions based on lived reality riddled with nativism and racism andnotsimplistic accounts of 'Tiger Moms,' high expectations, and Asian immigrant success. This riveting book powerfully turns the Model Minority Stereotype on its head!" -- Gilberto Q. Conchas,UC Irvine

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Book SynopsisChoice Top Book of 2017 Confronting and combating Islamophobia in America.Islamophobia has long been a part of the problem of racism in the United States, and it has only gotten worse in the wake of shocking terror attacks, the ongoing refugee crisis, and calls from public figures like Donald Trump for drastic action. As a result, the number of hate crimes committed against Middle Eastern Americans of all origins and religions have increased, and civil rights advocates struggle to confront this striking reality. In Islamophobia and Racism in America, Erik Love draws on in-depth interviews with Middle Eastern American advocates. He shows that, rather than using a well-worn civil rights strategy to advance reforms to protect a community affected by racism, many advocates are choosing to bolster universal civil liberties in the United States more generally, believing that these universal protections are reliable and strong enough to deal with social prejudice.Trade Review"Islamophobia and Racism offers a necessarily startling and chilling view of the pervasiveness ofIslamophobia and the effectiveness of the state in co-opting and fettering the language of advocacy in the United States...Love's work is effective, insightful, and pulsing with urgency and compassion." * Mashriq Mahjar Journal *"Poses crucial questions about the future of race and activism in America . . . Through extensive historical and sociological research, Love sets out to map the ecosystem of organizations claiming to speak for Middle Eastern Americans, and interrogates their use (or lack thereof) of race based language, organizing, and advocacy strategies." * Muftah *"Islamophobia and Racism in America makes contributions to the sociology of race, immigration, and advocacy movements. It also provides a valuable perspective to an important and timely topic by viewing Middle Eastern American rights through the lens of racial struggles in American history. The in-depth interviews of civil rights advocates in the six major organizations offer valuable inside views of the lessons of the advocacy movement. It is an accessible book for graduate and undergraduate students, as the text is easy to follow." -- American Journal of Sociology"As scholars and students grapple with how to understand the role of race in the situation of Muslim Americans, the book provides a dynamic historical account and a forceful argument about race and advocacy that will nourish productive and thoughtful debate among scholars and in the classroom." * Mobilization *"Love's book successfully highlights the co-constitution of race and religion in relation to Islamophobia and the radicalization of Muslims ... both because its specificity to the phenomenon of Islamophobia and its generalizability to racism in America, Love's research is both timely and timeless, significant for sociologist and others alike." * Sociology of Religion *"Invaluable for its detailed chronicle of Muslim-American activism and its careful attention to the fascinating complexities, dilemmas, and paradoxes of racial identity." * Pacific Standard *"An important look at the rise of Islamophobia in the United States and the activists who work to fight it." -- Mehdi Bozorgmehr,author of Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond"In Islamophobia and Racism in America, Erik Love traces the roots and practices of discriminatory images and policies against South Asian, Muslim, Middle Eastern and Sikh communities. Especially in todays political climate, his book is a necessary reminder that Americans must understand the context in which Islamophobia developed and the role it plays today." -- Deepa Iyer,author of We Too Sing America"Wedding institutional analysis with rigorous empirical research, Love shows how Middle Eastern American political identity was born at the intersection of state policy and societal hostility. Original, timely, and chillingly lucid, this work falls within the best traditions of sociology, critical race theory, and institutional history." -- Hisham Aidi,author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture

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Book SynopsisExplores how humanitarian aid workers help and hinder the care of unaccompanied children as they arrive in the United StatesEvery year, tens of thousands of children cross into the United States without a legal guardian at their side, often fleeing violence and poverty in their countries of origin. In Unaccompanied, Emily Ruehs-Navarro shows us one aspect of their heartbreaking journeys, as seen through the eyes of the aid workers who trybut too often failto help them. Drawing on interviews with aid workers, migrant children, and others, Ruehs-Navarro follows unaccompanied youth as they seek help from a wide range of professionals. From legal relief organizations to family reunification specialists, she shows us how different aid workers may choose to work for, with, or against unaccompanied immigrant youth, deciding whether they should be treated as refugees, child dependents, or, in some cases, criminals. Ruehs-Navarro highlights how aid workers, anTrade Review"Emily Ruehs-Navarro takes us on a compelling sociological journey that maps out what drives youth to migrate by themselves and what they encounter when they arrive at the U.S border. Using multiple qualitative methods, she illuminates the ways in which border securitization, racialized child welfare, and humanitarianism intersect to shape how we think of and respond to unaccompanied migrant youth. Integrating the experiences and perspectives of both youth and the professionals who work with them, this valuable book brings into focus the complex landscape of aid they operate in and the contradictions and possibilities they navigate to access aid. " -- Lorena Garcia, author of Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity"This work is important because it demonstrates the conditional nature of humanitarian legal aid toward youth and highlights the continued traumatization of youth even after crossing the border." * Sociology of Race of Ethnicity *

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Book SynopsisHow local Black and Brown communities can resist gentrification and fight for their interestsDespite promises from politicians, nonprofits, and government agencies, Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods remain plagued by poverty, failing schools, and gang activity. In Building a Better Chicago, Teresa Irene Gonzales shows us how, and why, these promises have gone unfulfilled, revealing tensions between neighborhood residents and the institutions that claim to represent them. Focusing on Little Village, the largest Mexican immigrant community in the Midwest, and Greater Englewood, a predominantly Black neighborhood, Gonzales gives us an on-the-ground look at Chicago's inner city. She shows us how philanthropists, nonprofits, and government agencies struggle for power and controloften against the interests of residents themselveswith the result of further marginalizing the communities of color they seek to help. But Gonzales also shows how these communitTrade ReviewBuilding a Better Chicago is not just about Chicago. Teresa Irene Gonzales speaks to urban community development writ large, uncovering how a core foundational piece of these conversations—trust—marginalizes dissent, invalidates local sentiment, and devalues reasonable concerns over process. Grounded in contemporary policy debates, Building a Better Chicago shows that mistrust is a powerful tool. It might be hard for urban elites to read, but through careful examples and analysis Gonzales shows us how collective skepticism holds value for community organizers—from vouchsafing planning processes to bridging social capital across other neighborhood communities. As a result, this book is a must-read for growth-minded policymakers, scholars of cities, and grassroots urban activists. -- Jonathan Wynn, author of Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and NewportTeresa Gonzales animates a powerful account of how state-actors direct the benefits of urban redevelopment towards White, urban elites and away from communities of color. In that respect, Chicago is like many cities across the United States. However, she shows how 'collective skepticism' allows for productive resistance as Black and Mexican-American residents from low-income communities stake claim to their neighborhoods and their city—forcing their voices and interests to be heard. * Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court *...this case study allows readers to clearly envision the complexity and discord that occur when economically impoverished neighborhoods seek empowerment. * Choice *This book is a prime example of a brilliantly written ethnography that allows the reader to become immersed in the microcosm of urban redevelopment politics in Chicago while raising critical questions about how existing power inequalities can be challenged. * Mobilization *Building a Better Chicago represents a valuable addition to the literatures on neighborhood development, community organizations, and urban activism…The book represents an important source for anyone who wishes to better understand urban politics and neighborhood change in low-income and racialized communities today. * American Sociological Association *This excellent addition to the literature on urban development challenges existing assumptions and invites us all to take Gonzales’s lead and imagine what a better world might look like. * Social Forces Levine Review BaBC *Gonzales makes an important contribution to the literature on the role of institutional stakeholders in the urban redevelopment process. She offers a critique of dominant approaches to neighborhood revitalization that rely on planning strategies that are perceived as top-down by residents and grassroots groups. * Journal of Urban Affairs *Gonzales provides unique insight into how communities can advocate for themselves and demand accountability from politicians and agencies in their midst. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of redevelopment and the tensions that exist between institutional and grassroots organizations within urban revitalization. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Studies!Explores Black representation in fantasy genres and comic booksCharacters like Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, Miles Morales, and Black Lightning are part of a growing cohort of black superheroes on TV and in film. Though comic books are often derided as naïve and childish, these larger-than-life superheroes demonstrate how this genre can serve as the catalyst for engaging the Black radical imagination.Keeping It Unreal: Comics and Black Queer Fantasy is an exploration of how fantasies of Black power and triumph fashion theoretical, political, and aesthetic challenges toand respite fromwhite supremacy and anti-Blackness. It examines representations of Blackness in fantasy-infused genres: superhero comic books, erotic comics, fantasy and science-fiction genre literature, as well as contemporary literary realist fiction centering fantastic conceits.Darieck Scott offers a rich meditTrade ReviewScott reflects on the importance of fantasy in comic books in this brisk and insightful meditation ... this analysis is rich and rewarding. * Publishers Weekly *This fabulously written reconsideration of fantasy goes beyond readings of Black queer comics to reveal the value of becoming fantastical—of living in a ‘habitable imaginary’ where dreams are substantiated. I came looking for insights about Luke Cage and Black Panther . . . only to find liberation and Black queer life. * Jennifer Brody, Stanford University *A primer in counter-intuition and bold imagination that dares to embrace the radical possibility of black happiness. Writing with razor-sharp wit and blistering erudition, Scott rewrites the meaning of fantasy to reveal its power as an intellectual and political tool for reimagining blackness beyond an antiblack world. His captivating excavations of black fantasy in the comic genre provide not only a space of pleasure and possibility, but a tool for living a different kind of black futurity. * Tina Campt, Brown University *Scott does an amazing job in the conclusion of providing some context as well as personal revelation, that allows the reader to feel like they too are part of this conversation and creation…Overall, Scott’s Keeping it Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics is a well-constructed engagement of various scholarly sources in the understanding and construction of ourselves, of others, and of life through the use of fantasy. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *In Keeping It Unreal, Scott doubles down on his belief that even in a whitewashed landscape, Black comic book heroes and their influence warp the foundation of how the industry operates, whether seen in superheroes or in porn. Ultimately, as a powerful reflection of the Black body’s identity, he argues that within these fantasy-acts lies a deep-rooted recognition of Black humanity that cannot be erased or denied. * Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society *

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Book SynopsisDelves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fieldsThrough a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men's attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the Orientalism evident in discussions of mixed maTrade ReviewA wonderful read for and about sportss observers, participants, scholars, and fans. With a wide variety of approaches ranging from media analysis to autoethnography, this collection of smart and accessible essays provides a great model for thinking about sportsand through sports about ethnicity, race, and gender in specific local, transnational, and historical contexts. -- Erica Rand,author of Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the IceSports is one of the most important arenas of socialization and popular culture, and Asian Americans have often been seen as having a disjunctive or non-existent relationship to it. This sui generis collection shows in unexpected and startling ways how a long but under-examined history of Asian American sporting culturefrom participation and competition to spectatorship and fandomfundamentally reshapes allegories of national belonging and race at the heart of athletics. -- David L. Eng,University of Pennsylvania

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of how race shapes Latino millennials' notions of national belonging Latino millennials constitute the second largest segment of the millennial population. By sheer numbers they will inevitably have a significant social, economic, and political impact on U.S. society. Beyond basic demographics, however, not much is known about how they make sense of themselves as Americans.In Citizens but Not Americans,Nilda Flores-González examines how Latino millennials understand race, experience race, and develop notions of belonging. Based on nearly one hundred interviews, Flores-González argues that though these young Latina/os are U.S. citizens by birth, they do not feel they are part of the American project, and are forever at the margins looking in. The book provides an inside look at how characteristics such as ancestry, skin color, social class, gender, language and culture converge and shape these youths' feelings of belonging as they navigate everyday rTrade ReviewIn building her argument about how U.S.-born Latino millennials challenge the conventional black-white racial binary, Flores-González redefines the idea that Latinos constitute a racial middle … This study provides an excellent example of theory building embedded in qualitative research. The author incorporates scholarship from sociology and political science, as well as ethnic studies, to explain the broader theoretical context in a way that is accessible for advanced undergraduate students and beyond. For these reasons, Citizens but Not Americans makes a significant contribution to literature on race, Latinos, and citizenship. -- American Journal of SociologyA timely book that captures the racial world that Latino millennials experience in the United States. Required reading for people who want a glimpse of what the future is likely to hold for Latinos. -- Rogelio Sáenz, Co-author of Latinos in the United States: Diversity and ChangeNilda Flores-González challenges scholars to move beyond current conceptualizations of race, the racial order, and national inclusion that do not match Latinos self-understandings as racialized subjects. Her theorization of the & racial middle is the most comprehensive and nuanced analysis of this concept to date. A major contribution to the literature on race in general and on Latinos in particular. -- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Author of Racism without RacistsProfessor Flores-González advances theoretical notions of race and belonging by proposing a hybrid framework of ethnoracial citizenship . . . contributes to our understanding of the millennial generationa group that is often talked about but of which we have little scholarly knowledge. -- Vilma Ortiz, Co-author of Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and RaceUses the poignant voices of Latino millennials to show how being born into the nation does not guarantee a sense of full social inclusion. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in why belonging, race, and citizenship matter for Latinos and the larger society. -- Leo Chavez, Author of The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the NationFlores-González's research is thorough...This text could become a valuable resourcefor non-Latinos to gain a better understanding of fellow American citizens of Latino heritage, many of whom have been here for generations. * Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA) *

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Book SynopsisEnlists the principles of post-humanist critique in order to investigate decades of intimate dialogues between African American and Spanish intellectuals In Archives of Flesh, Robert Reid-Pharr reveals the deep history of intellectual engagement between African America and Spain. Opening a fascinating window onto black and anti-Fascist intellectual life from 1898 through the mid-1950s, Reid-Pharr argues that key institutions of Western Humanism, including American colleges and universities, developed in intimate relation to slavery, colonization, and white supremacy. This retreat to rigidly established philosophical and critical traditions can never fully addressor even fully recognizethe deep-seated hostility to black subjectivity underlying the humanist ideal of a transcendent Manhood. Calling for a specifically anti-white supremacist reexamination of the archives of black subjectivity and resistance, Reid-Pharr enlists the principles of post-humanist critiTrade ReviewArchives of Fleshis a daring and beautifully written book, offering reflections on the current state of Black studies and the sociopolitical and geographical locations of Blackness that inform our dominant discourses. With this volume, Reid-Pharr expands his reputation as a rigorous and iconoclastic scholar who pushes the field to examine its sacred cows and consider how their rigid mythologies cost us the development of more truthful, insightful, and liberating analytical practices. A bold indictment of the intellectual inflexibility that informs mainstream discourses on Blackness and the politics of difference,Archives of Fleshholds its own as a polemic by one of our most famous and respected contemporary scholars. -- Michelle Wright,author of Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology

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Book SynopsisHow black and Latino youth learn, create, and collaborate onlineThe Digital Edge examines how the digital and social-media lives of low-income youth, especially youth of color, have evolved amidst rapid social and technological change. While notions of the digital divide between the technology rich and the technology poor have largely focused on access to new media technologies, the contours of the digital divide have grown increasingly complex. Analyzing data from a year-long ethnographic study at Freeway High School, the authors investigate how the digital media ecologies and practices of black and Latino youth have adapted as a result of the wider diffusion of the internet all around us--in homes, at school, and in the palm of our hands. Their eager adoption of different technologies forge new possibilities for learning and creating that recognize the collective power of youth: peer networks, inventive uses of technology, and impassioned interests that are remaking the digital worldTrade ReviewBased on an ethnographic study conducted in Austin, Texas, involving nearly 300 interviews, Watkins and his coauthors provide an overview of the digital divide that African Americans and Latino youth face and an exploration of the ways they use mobile technology and the internet.… The book’s strength lies in its asset-based framing of the potential and agency of adolescents who are eager to harness technology in their educations and careers. The book concludes by encouraging educators to ask if they are truly preparing youth for the future. -- CHOICEA powerful dispatch from the front lines of the battle to ensure that digital education closesrather than widensgaps between communities of color and the rest of the nation. Digital Edge wrestles with the complex questions of whether the excitement Black Latino youth have expressed in adopting digital technologies can turn into economic opportunity, and whether our education system is capable of channeling that passion into educational equity. -- Ethan Zuckerman,author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of ConnectionFor anyone interested in an up-close observation of how black, Latinx, immigrant, and low-income students are participating in a complex digital world, I highly recommendThe Digital Edgefor its critical analysis of the complexities and tensions involved with technology in education, equity, and what it means to prepare all youth to be 'future ready'. -- Jane Margolis,author of Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, And ComputingA major contribution in understanding the impact of precarious access to digital technology at school and home as well as missed opportunities for STEM education resulting in further widening the education and income gap, reproducing inequality for low income Black and Latinx youth, and severely impacting communities. * Social Forces *The Digital Edge explains why what we believe about the digital divide is wrong, and in 2020, it could not be more relevant ... the authors presciently outline why it is time to rethink the old conception of the digital divide. This book is a must for educators, and an important read for anyone interested in the convoluted present and future of the digital divide in America. * International Journal of Communication *

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE W.E.B. DUBOIS DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARD, GIVEN BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BLACK POLITICAL SCIENTISTSA wide-ranging Black feminist interrogation, reaching from the #MeToo movement to the legacy of gender-based violence against Black womenFrom Michelle Obama to Condoleezza Rice, Black women are uniquely scrutinized in the public eye. In Re-Imagining Black Women, Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd explores how Black womenand Blackness more broadlyare understood in our political imagination and often become the subjects of public controversy. Drawing on politics, popular culture, psychoanalysis, and more, Alexander-Floyd examines our conflicting ideas, opinions, and narratives about Black women, showing how they are equally revered and reviled as an embodiment of good and evil, cast either as victims or villains, citizens or outsiders. Ultimately, Alexander-Floyd showcases the complex experiences of Black women as political subjects. At a time of extreme racial tension, Re-ImaginingTrade Review"Alexander-Floyd has written a provocative, hard-hitting analysis of Black political matters, ranging from Condolezza Rice, to Barack Obama to Bill Cosby to R. Kelly. Bold and controversial, Re-Imagining Black Women is a must-read for scholars attempting to navigate the complex political and cultural terrain of U.S. history over the past two decades." -- Beverly Guy-Sheftall, co-author of Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities"An insightful and necessary intervention into post-politics: its origins, its intersections, and its fictive construction by the state and popular media." -- Paula J. Giddings, author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions"Drawing on political science, women and gender studies, media studies, and psychoanalysis, the author critiques an array of subjects, from Condoleezza Rice to Barack Obama, the fictional Madea, and #MeToo. This would be excellent for a senior seminar or even graduate courses." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisIn the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo-American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. This book deals with this topic.Trade Review"In clear prose and supported by abundant evidence, it interrogates one of the most important concepts in Chicana/o historyAztlánfrom a fresh perspective. The book will be welcomed by anyone interested in southern California, its history, and its relationship to Aztlán." * The Journal of American History *"This book is U.S.-Mexico borderland scholarship at its best. [] While written for an academic audience, Lint Sagarena writes with poetic elegance that could dance with even the most casual reader. This book is a must-read for any regional studies onSouthern California." * Review of Religious Research *"A brilliant study. Read about how 'American hispanophilia' was imprinted in buildings even as hatred for Mexicans reigned in the streets. Discover how Protestant fantasies about Spanish culture helped Americanize Catholicism and make Mexico seem more foreign. Learn how Mexicans projected their own fantasies of an idealized indigenous past onto their northern territories. See how the mythical homeland of the Aztecs became the political hope of Chicanos, who helped make California the site of new portrayals of the Mexican Virgen de Guadalupe. . . . A timely book for our national discourse about Mexico, immigration, and future cultural identities in the U.S." -- David Carrasco,Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard Divinity School"A compelling study of an important and disturbing history with significant contemporary implications. Lint Sagarena demonstrates how various political, cultural, and commercial interests reimagined California's Spanish religious past in order to diminish its Mexican and indigenous present. Mining mission revival architecture, the mural movement, popular literatures, public festivals, and international expositions, this illuminating volume charts the invention, and reinvention, of an 'American' California." -- Sally M. Promey,Yale University"This book is for anyone who is fascinated by the layering of time, by the structuring of place, memory, and peoples in landscapes that are half fantasy in the storied terrain of Southern California. Lint Sagarena gives us a subtle investigation of how ethnicity and nationalism rely on material forms anchored in style and imagination. He shows how history is a tale of loss and imagined reconstitution. Myths are special kinds of stories, told and performed in ways that make their credibility visceral. Aztlán is one of these, a beguiling, wonderful, fantastic notion imbued in the architecture of homes and malls. This is a tale well told and a book that fills an enormous gap in the literature of religious life and imagination in America." -- David Morgan,Duke University"Lint Sagarena offers a multifaceted study of historical memory in California that examines how Euro-Americans and Chicanos created distinct and conflicting interpretations of the state's Spanish and Mexican heritage." * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 1. Conquest and Legacy 2. Building a Region3. The Spanish Heritage 4. Making Aztlan Conclusion

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Book SynopsisForegrounds the working black body as both a category of analysis and lived experienceHow does it feel to be a problem? asked W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk. For many thinkers across the color line, the Negro problem was inextricably linked to the concurrent labor problem, occasioning debates regarding blacks' role in the nation's industrial past, present and future. With blacks freed from the seemingly protective embrace of slavery, many felt that the ostensibly primitive Negro was doomed to expire in the face of unbridled industrial progress. Yet efforts to address the so-called Negro problem invariably led to questions regarding the relationship between race, industry and labor writ large. In consequence, a collection of thinkers across the natural and social sciences developed a new culture of racial management, linking race and labor to color and the body. Evolutionary theory and industrial management combined to identify certain peoples with certain forms of work and reTrade ReviewForging A Laboring Race is an important and imaginative contribution to the history of race and labor in the Progressive Era. It is also a brisk, powerful, and re-orienting critique of the very notion of 'the black worker' as a discrete category of experience. This notion was produced by myriad think tanks, self-professed social scientists, and busy-bodied state agencies, and it had real consequences for the men and women who arrived in the urban North in the first Great Migration. It persists to this day. * Matthew Pratt Guterl, Brown University *A painstakingly thorough examination of the black worker as a commodity and a concept within the Progressive imagination. . . . Lawrie boldly demonstrates how a race-based form of industrial capitalism was central to the making of the modern U.S. state during the Progressive Era. * Davarian L. Baldwin, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Trinity College *The book is a reminder of the need to examine the production, dissemination, and broad acceptance of scientific knowledge in historical context, and does so itself in a compact analysis that will interest scholars of race and ethnicity, progressivism, state formation, and the history of science. * Choice *A stimulating account of the uses of sciences and the state in defining blackness in the services of war and capitalism, and important reading for any scholar of race, the progressive era, or modernity. * Canadian Journal of History *Lawrie demonstrates that difference, and most specifically blackness, has been conceived as problematic by Americans. Unfortunately, Americans continue to struggle with the question of whether a diverse group of people can form and maintain a cohesive and strong nation. In our contemporary period, those who say it cannot be done continue to rely on false data; in this matter, Lawries work can help us greet the future as well as the past. * Canada and the United States *

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2024 Global Sociology Book Award, given by the Canadian Sociological Association Winner of the 2024 Silver Medal for the Canada West Non-Fiction category, given by The Independent Publisher Book AwardWinner of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America's Book Award on Asian AmericaHonorable Mention, 2024 Social Science Category Book Awards, given by the Association for Asian American StudiesHonorable Mention, 2022 Betty and McClung Lee Book Award, given by the Association for Humanist SociologyUnravels how US visa laws fail Indian professional workers and their legally dependent spouses and familiesThe Opportunity Trap is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Comparing two distinct groups of Indian immigrant families families of male high-tech workers and female nursesPallavi Banerjee reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racializeTrade ReviewPowerful and vivid, The Opportunity Trap tells us of the pains wrought by legal dependency on temporary visa workers and their spouses. Both are suspended and indentured by law. This gender comparative study of hi-tech workers and nurses is a must read as it advances our understanding of immigration, the family, and law in the United States. -- Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, author of Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab StatesThrough her insightful analyses of how dependent visas reflect a gendered and racialized regime that controls immigrant families, Banerjee brilliantly identifies the many contradictions faced by Indian migrant workers and their families in the U.S. The Opportunity Trap beautifully captures how the visa regime devalues and makes invisible those on dependent visas, reworks gender relations and parenting within the household, while also making families excessively beholden to migrant workers' employers. This is an important book that should be widely read. -- Joya Misra, co-author of Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities Shape Retail Clothing WorkPallavi Banerjee’s The Opportunity Trap offers a fascinating window into the intimate relationship between migration visas and the work/family lives of skilled migrants and their spousal dependents. * Social Forces *The Opportunity Trap presents a meticulous sketch of the poignant and constrained lives of high-skilled Indian migrants and their families in the United States. Banerjee skillfully illustrates how forced dependency intersects with the social, cultural, and economic perceptions of masculinity. [The Opportunity Trap] opens several new directions for policymakers, scholars, and activists working on gender, labor, and migration. * Gender & Society *Coherent and persuasive. The Opportunity Trap contributes heavily to the scholarship of intersectionality entailing gender, race, ethnicity, class, immigration, and work, as well as to the study of work and family issues. I highly recommend this book for any undergraduate or graduate course on gender or work, or anyone interested in teaching immigration and work from an intersectional perspective. * Work and Occupations *A thoughtful, compassionate, and richly detailed study of the lived experiences of racialized, high-skilled migrant families in the United States. Banerjee vividly describes everyday people’s struggles and failures to affirm their personal dignity and build a good life under such conditions. Rigorous, heartfelt, and intersectional, The Opportunity Trap is an important contribution. -- Neda Maghbouleh * Labour / Le Travail *Banerjee brings the reader into the private lives of these families as they negotiate belonging in a country that both constrains and enables their upward mobility and happiness... Employers, management, undergraduate students, or populations impacted by the visa regime would benefit from reading Banerjee’s book. This book would be a great addition to gender and migration studies courses. * Canadian Ethnic Studies *The Opportunity Trap delivers the kind of multi-scalar analysis that development scholars treasure. In the tradition of feminist global ethnography, Banerjee interrogates the making of the self, the worker, the nation and the institutions that knit them together... This book will be invaluable for undergraduate courses on globalization, gender, families, immigration and development in Asia. * The Journal of Development Studies *The Opportunity Trap offers a nuanced understanding of the outdated and unequal visa system in the US. Banerjee's research centers the people who struggle through the visa regime, making the majority of the book accessible to general audiences. The book’s rich theoretical contributions are ideal for immigration and gender studies courses, and Banerjee’s practical recommendations to reform visa laws makes The Opportunity Trap a digestible and crucial reading for visa policymakers, activists, and other political workers. * Journal of Asian American Studies *Taken together, the focus on gender and its interactions with other intersectional aspects of Indian migrant life in the United States—along with the emphasis on the experiences of dependent visa-holding spouses—makes The Opportunity Trap a valuable contribution to the field of migration studies…this is a book I strongly recommend to scholars working on migration, South Asian diasporas, and related fields. * Industrial and Labor Relations Review *In addition to introducing a new intersectional parenting approach, Banerjee invites family scholars to further investigate a powerful theme: unpacking the privileges that stem from pre-migration class location of families in the midst of oppressive conditions fueled by the U.S. visa regime. * Journal of Family Studies *

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