Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisBeginning with the Latino community’s first attempt to acquire a political voice in Chicago politics in 1911 and continuing through Latino officeholders of the early twenty-first century, Cruz surveys not only the struggles of this community but also the ways in which Chicago’s Latinos overcame those challenges to gain their political voice.Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Boss Richard J. Daley and Machine Politics 2. Michael A. Bilandic and Jane M. Byrne—Same Old Thing? 3. Harold Washington and Reform 4. Eugene Sawyer and Richard M. Daley—A New Day? 5. Fall From Grace 6. Progressives, Socialists, and Machine Politicians Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisOne of the great German Expressionist artists, Kaethe Kollwitz wrote little of herself. But her diary, kept from 1900 to her death in 1945, and her brief essays and letters express, as well as explain, much of the spirit, wisdom, and internal struggle which was eventually transmuted into her art.Trade ReviewAn unforgettable experience." —New York Times Book Review"A valuable and readable work." —Los Angeles Times Book Review"[Kollwitz's] diary and letters . . . provide a dramatic record of German history during the turbulent time that encompassed World War I, the November Revolution, the Weimar Republic and the appearance of Nazism. To these, Kollwitz grants a compassionate, critical, and insightful vision, recording her own witnessing of historical events, her own experience of the everyday in a testimony which is generally recognized as one of the greatest autobiographical German texts of the century. . . . As human documents they have few equals; as historical documents, they are fundamental." —Reinhold Heller

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Book SynopsisThrough interviews with prominent producers, directors, choreographers, designers, dancers, and actors, Young and Zabriskie create a portrait of a diverse, dynamic artistic community between 1970 and 2010. They frame this history with helpful guides, including a chronology of key events, a glossary of names, and an appendix of leading performing arts institutions in Chicago.

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Book SynopsisBased on a vast amount of archival research, Adrienne Macki Braconi's illuminating study of three important community-based theaters in Harlem shows how their work was essential to the formation of a public identity for African Americans and the articulation of their goals, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the Civil Rights movement.

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Book SynopsisIn his 1952 book In Battle for Peace, W.E.B. Du Bois announced that he was a citizen of the world. This book chronicles selected chapters of Du Bois's final three decades between the 1930s and 1960s. It maps his extraordinarily active and productive latter years to social, cultural, and political transformations across the globe.

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Book SynopsisProvides a study of anti-Blackness and white supremacy across four continents that demonstrates that colour-blindness is neither new nor a subtype of racist ideology, but a constitutive technology of racism.Table of Contents Introduction:The Master’sColorblind Tools PART I: THE MAKING OF WHITE NATIONS Chapter 1:Colorblindness and Nation Building Chapter 2: Mestizaje and Racial Genocide PART II: THE ONGOING RACE TO SILENCE RACE Chapter 3: The White Mobilization Against Desegregation and Redistribution Chapter 4:The Perils of White "Antiracism" PART III: DECOLONIAL IMAGINARIES AND COLORBLIND LOGICS Chapter 5: Espousing Liberal Individualism in Cubena's Works Chapter 6: Encountering the Other in Chicana Literature Epilogue: An Undying Colonialism Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFeeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Feel Me Chapter 1. A Black Study in Grief : Salish Sea Chapter 2. Lucille Clifton’s Atheology of Joy! Chapter 3. Ecstatic Vocal Practice Chapter 4.Shame and the Visual Field of Black Motherhood Chapter 5. Toward a Methodology of Anger The End: Everything in the Ocean Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn award-winning author presents a portrait of Black America in the nineteenth century. Unshuttered: Poems is the vessel for poetic personae and a selection of antique photographs of Black Americans, which Patricia Smith has collected over the course of twenty years.Trade Review“Her work is always timely, powerful, necessary, and at turns heartbreaking.” —Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir “Patricia Smith is a masterful poet, performer, and pundit. And while her chosen field is the form and grace of language, her gift to the world that orbits the Black experience is truth.” —Walter Mosley, author of The Awkward Black Man: Stories“Over the course of her career, Patricia Smith has a reputation for tackling complicated ideas, combining humor and tragedy, and bridging the gap between spoken word and lyrical prose.” —Alex Dueben, The Millions “A great stage performer and a former national slam poetry champion, Smith is also a performer on the page.” —John S. O’Connor, Harvard Review “Smith has a way of shining light into the darkness with a necessary and timely tongue of fire, challenging readers to open their eyes and face the truth.” —Kathryn de Lancellotti, The Bind “This is an affecting, lyrical work of empathy and imagination complemented by stunning images.” —starred review, Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisThe Steelband Movement examines the dramatic transformation of pan from a Carnival street music into a national art and symbol in Trinidad and Tobago. By focusing on pan as a cultural process, Stephen Stuempfle demonstrates how the struggles and achievements of the steelband movement parallel the problems and successes of building a nation. Stuempfle explores the history of the steelband from its emergence around 1940 as an assemblage of diverse metal containers to today's immense orchestra of high-precision instruments with bell-like tones. Drawing on interviews with different generations of pan musicians (including the earliest), a wide array of archival material, and field observations, the author traces the growth of the movement in the context of the grass-roots uprisings of the 1930s and 1940s, the American presence in Trinidad in World War II, the nationalist movement of the postwar period, the aftermath of independence from Britain in 1962, the Black Power protests and the oiTable of ContentsMaps Preface Introduction 1. Festive and Musical Traditions in Trinidad 2. The Emergence of the Steelband: The 1930s and 1940s 3. The Institutionalization of the Steelband: The 1940s and 1950s 4. The Steelband in the Post-Independence Era: The 1960s and 1970s 5. The Steelband in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago 6. The Steelband: Cultural Creativity and the Construction of Identities Suggested Listening Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis"There is unanimity among these historians and sociologists in ascribing seminal importance to The Philadelphia Negro."-David Levering Lewis, Journal of American HistoryTrade Review"A splendid collection of essays." * Times Literary Supplement *"This book not only reassesses the role of W. E. B. Du Bois as a public intellectual but reappraises the impact of his seminal study on interpretations of the twentieth-century African-American experience…It offers an interdisciplinary critique that will shape scholarship in the twenty-first century." * Joe W. Trotter, Carnegie Mellon University *"There is unanimity among these historians and sociologists in ascribing seminal importance to The Philadelphia Negro." * David Levering Lewis, Journal of American History *

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Book SynopsisA picture of Philadelphia radically different from the conventional portrait of a staid old city, corrupt and contented. The men and women of Philadelphia who emerge in these pages are anything but staid, and certainly not contented.Trade Review"Just the kind of book that is needed. It should be stimulating to all historians interested in urban America." * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsPreface to the 1998 Edition Introduction 1. Poverty, Fear, and Continuity: An Analysis of the Poor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia 2. Residential Mobility Within the Nineteenth-Century City 3. Urbanization as a Cause of Violence: Philadelphia as a Test Case 4. Fire Companies and Gangs in Southwark: The 1840s 5. Crime Patterns in Philadelphia, 1840-70 6. Free Blacks in Antebellum Philadelphia 7. The Philadelphia Irish: Persistent Presence 8. "A Peaceful City": Public Order in Philadelphia from Consolidation Through the Civil War 9. Housing the Poor in the City of Homes: Philadelphia at the Turn of the Century 10. The Immigrant and the City: Poles, Italians, and Jews in Philadelphia, 1870-1920 11. Philadelphia's Jewish Neighborhoods 12. Philadelphia's South Italians in the 1920s 13. Recurring Themes Suggested Readings Index

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Book SynopsisA work marked by theoretical sophistication, wide learning, and social passion, Red Matters is a major contribution to the imperative effort of understanding the indigenous presence on the American continents.Table of ContentsPreface 1. Nationalism, Indigenism, Cosmopolitanism: Three Critical Perspectives on Native American Literatures 2. On the Translation of Native American Song and Story: A Theorized History 3. America's Histories 4. From "Half-Blood" to "Mixedblood"; Cogewea and the "Discourse of Indian Blood" 5. The "Rage Stage": Contextualizing Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisPioneering historian, sociologist, editor, novelist, poet, and organizer, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his efforts and achievements in the political and intellectual world.Often labeled an atheist, Du Bois was in fact deeply and creatively involved with religion. Historian Edward J. Blum reveals how spirituality was central to Du Bois''s approach to Marxism, pan-Africanism, and nuclear disarmament, his support for black churches, and his reckoning of the spiritual wage of white supremacy. His writings, teachings, and prayers served as articles of faith for fellow activists of his day, fTrade Review"Blum's work powerfully evokes both the spirit and substance of Du Bois's moral vision in ways that will greatly benefit students and scholars of American religious and intellectual history for years to come." * Journal of American History *"From comprehensive and original archival research, Blum reveals a Du Bois who from the beginning to the end of his career was obsessed with religion, its rhetoric, typologies, practices, and moral virtues. This book-really, an intervention-is long overdue." * Callaloo *"A greater tribute to the man cannot be found, even in the works of the most seasoned Du Bois scholars." * Church History *"Blum illuminates the entire range of Du Bois's writings, showing him as a prophetic thinker at times, a deliverer of jeremiads, a composer of creeds, an appreciator of the spirituality of everyday folk, and a visionary who anticipated trends in black theology and womanist theology. A truly valuable contribution to African American and American religious history." * Paul Harvey, University of Colorado *"In this eloquent and penetrating book, Edward Blum explores a crucial but neglected aspect of the life and times of W. E. B. Du Bois: the intersection of race and religion. . . . He gives us, as no one else has, a new Du Bois. It is a signal accomplishment and should be required reading for anyone interested in American protest literature and the role of religion in social reform." * John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men *"Edward Blum has offered us a remarkably fresh, provocative, and searching reading of Du Bois, one that places religion and spirituality at the center of his thought and sensibilities. But he has offered us something more as well: an important engagement with religion and the construction of race-of blackness and whiteness-in America." * Steven Hahn, author of A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration *"While W. E. B. Du Bois's many prescient ideas on race and the color line are often quoted, he is rarely characterized in the sacred prophetic sense. In this first comprehensive study of the religious meaning and biblical references in Du Bois's writings, Edward Blum brilliantly and movingly renders the complex soul of this intellectual giant, who demanded his people's deliverance from a sin-sick world of racial injustice." * Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, author of Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 *"With this book Edward J. Blum solidified his reputation as one of the most singular and innovative scholars writing on religion and race today." * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Rethinking W.E.B. Du Bois, Rethinking Religion and Race 1. The Hero with a Black Face: Autobiography and the Mythology of the Self 2. Race as Cosmic Sight in The Souls of Black Folk 3. A Dark Monk Who Wrote History and Sociology: The Spiritual Wage of whiteness, the Black Church, and Mystical Africa 4. Black Messiahs and Murderous Whites: Violence and Faith in Literary Expression 5. Christ Was a Communist: Religion for an Aging Leftist Epilogue. The Passing of the Prophet Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisMichael L. Ondaatje examines the ideas and arguments of prominent black conservative thinkers during the past three decades, charting the evolution of black conservative thought in relation to key debates on affirmative action, welfare, and education.Trade Review"A splendid narrative of the rise of black conservative intellectuals who emerged into the public sphere with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. . . . A first-rate, evenhanded account of black conservatism that will likely be a pivotal work on the topic for years to come." * Journal of American History *"Thoughtful, well written. . . . Ondaatje has written a useful assessment of the late twentieth century iteration of an important but understudied historical and contemporary intellectual tradition." * Rhetoric and Public Affairs *"Michael Ondaatje has taken on a subject that few have written about so thoroughly and extensively, and his book makes a notable contribution to modern American intellectual history and race relations. He probes deeply into the thought of black conservative intellectuals, exploring their positions on such key racial issues as affirmative action, welfare policy, and public education. Applying rigorous critical analysis, he also documents their logical failures, intellectual inconsistencies, and suspect arguments." * Raymond A. Mohl, coeditor of The New African American Urban History *"A well-written and important piece of scholarship that aids considerably in historical understanding of black conservatism in particular and modern American conservatism in general." * Edward J. Blum, author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Profiles of an Intellectual Vanguard Chapter Two: Affirmative Action Dilemmas Chapter Three: Partisans of the Poor? Chapter Four: Visions of School Reform Conclusion Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn 1890, a delegation of African American activists formed the Afro-American League, the nation's first national civil rights organization. Over the course of nearly two decades, these activists fought to end disfranchisement and segregation, and to contest racial violence, creating the foundation for the NAACP and the modern civil rights movement.Trade Review"An Army of Lions is a stunning and heroic work of research about one of the great 'origins' stories of American history. With remarkable originality, Alexander illuminates the grassroots civil rights organizations, leadership, and strategies in the nineteenth century, well before we typically think about those efforts. In the hands of this very talented historian, we see that T. Thomas Fortune and others struggled with the same questions that occupied the later generations of Du Bois and King. This is a scholarly achievement of the first order, with wide social and political implications today." * David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era *"With impressive detail, An Army of Lions documents a complex era in African American politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Alexander offers readers invaluable insights into how African American activists responded to the rising violence, disfranchisement, and segregation that characterized the Jim Crow era. Most importantly, he helps us to see how a broad range of early civil rights organizations were vying with one another for national leadership, political access, and mass support." * Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan *"In his excellent study, Shawn Leigh Alexander recovers the history of the civil rights organizations that emerged in the United States between the 1880s and 1909 . . . and in doing so sheds new light on the origins of the NAACP and its strategies for battling racism and on the nature of black politics during the Nadir." * Journal of American History *"Alexander's extremely rich monograph unravels the complex ideological, personal, and institutional features of grassroots African American civil rights organization, leadership, and protest during what historian Rayford W. Logan termed the 'nadir' of race relations in the US, the era of Jim Crow. . . . Alexander's great accomplishment is in his digging more deeply into the primary sources-especially newspapers-and in establishing a wider context for early black activist and protest groups that culminated in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People." * Choice *"An Army of Lions should catapult its author, Shawn Leigh Alexander, to the forefront of young scholars of African American history. This brilliant narrative successfully demonstrates that black activists formed national civil rights organizations predating DuBois's Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People." * The North Carolina Historical Review *"Alexander's major accomplishment is to place Booker T. Washington, seen as a conservative black leader, into a more progressive debate as he was often involved, albeit covertly, with more militant civil rights organizations." * American Historical Review *"In detailing the organizational history that lay behind the founding of the NAACP, An Army of Lions provides a compelling narrative that will appeal to historians, sociologists, and scholars of rhetoric alike. Alexander's account emphasizes both the continuity in rhetorical strategies between the Afro-American Council and the NAACP, and the institutional context from which these continuities emerged. But perhaps most importantly, Alexander turns our attention to early and often-overlooked episodes in civil rights history, episodes that contributed in important ways to our understanding of civil rights in the present." * Rhetoric & Public Affairs *Table of ContentsPreface Chapter 1. Aceldama and the Black Response Chapter 2. "Stand Their Ground on This Civil Rights Business" Chapter 3. Interregnum and Resurrection Chapter 4. Not Just "A Bubble in Soap Water" Chapter 5. To Awaken the Conscience of America Chapter 6. Invasion of the Tuskegee Machine Chapter 7. An Army of Mice or an Army of Lions? Chapter 8. "It Is Strike Now or Never" Epilogue List of Abbreviations Notes Index Ac knowledgments

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Book SynopsisEarly African American Print Culture presents seventeen original essays that demonstrate how the study of African American print culture might enrich the study of print culture, while at the same time expanding the terrain of African American literature beyond authorship to editing, illustration, printing, circulation, and reading.Trade Review"A must-read for scholars of African American literature and those who study the development of print culture in the early American republic. . . . The book's seventeen chapters admirably illuminate the multifaceted ways African Americans engaged with the world of print between the mid-eighteenth and the early twentieth centuries." * Journal of American History *"Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein have fashioned seventeen well-conceived and -executed works into an anthology that advances our understanding of how early African American literature fits into the historical landscape of communication arts." * African American Review *"Illustrated by engrossing and, at times, disconcerting visual images, [the book] productively brings together the work of established critical figures." * Modern Language Review *"Early African American Print Culture reads like a manifesto, a call to action-sometimes directly, by cataloging the work that remains to be done, and sometimes simply by offering models of scholarship on familiar and unfamiliar authors and texts. The central point, of course, is that we need to attend to the whole of American print culture if we are to understand the complexities of African American writing throughout the nineteenth century." * John Ernest, West Virginia University *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Early African American Print Culture —Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein PART I. VECTORS OF MOVEMENT Chapter 1. The Print Atlantic: Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, and the Cultural Significance of the Book —Joseph Rezek Chapter 2. The Unfortunates: What the Life Spans of Early Black Books Tell Us About Book History —Joanna Brooks Chapter 3. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Circuits of Abolitionist Poetry —Meredith L. McGill Chapter 4. Early African American Print Culture and the American West —Eric Gardner PART II. RACIALIZATION AND IDENTITY PRODUCTION Chapter 5. Apprehending Early African American Literary History —Jeannine Marie DeLombard Chapter 6. Black Voices, White Print: Racial Practice, Print Publicity, and Order in the Early American Republic —Corey Capers Chapter 7. Slavery, Imprinted: The Life and Narrative of William Grimes —Susanna Ashton Chapter 8. Bottles of Ink and Reams of Paper: Clotel, Racialization, and the Material Culture of Print —Jonathan Senchyne PART III. ADAPTATION, CITATION, DEPLOYMENT Chapter 9. Notes from the State of Saint Domingue: The Practice of Citation in Clotel —Lara Langer Cohen Chapter 10. The Canon in Front of Them: African American Deployments of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" —Daniel Hack Chapter 11. Another Long Bridge: Reproduction and Reversion in Hagar's Daughter —Holly Jackson Chapter 12. "Photographs to Answer Our Purposes": Representations of the Liberian Landscape in Colonization Print Culture —Dalila Scruggs Chapter 13. Networking Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Hyper Stowe in Early African American Print Culture —Susan Gillman PART IV. PUBLIC PERFORMANCES Chapter 14. The Lyric Public of Les Cenelles —Lloyd Pratt Chapter 15. Imagining a State of Fellow Citizens: Early African American Politics of Publicity in the Black State Conventions —Derrick R. Spires Chapter 16. "Keep It Before the People": The Pictorialization of American Abolitionism —Radiclani Clytus Chapter 17. John Marrant Blows the French Horn: Print, Performance, and the Making of Publics in Early African American Literature —Elizabeth Maddock Dillon Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisShortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a government report titled The Negro Family: A Case for National Action that captured the attention of President Lyndon Johnson. Responding to the demands of African American activists that the United States go beyond civil rights to secure economic justice, Moynihan thought his analysis of black families highlighted socioeconomic inequality. However, the report''s central argument that poor families headed by single mothers inhibited African American progress touched off a heated controversy. The long-running dispute over Moynihan''s conclusions changed how Americans talk about race, the family, and poverty.Fifty years after its publication, the Moynihan Report remains a touchstone in contemporary racial politics, cited by President Barack Obama and Congressman Paul Ryan among others. Beyond Civil Rights offers the definitive history of the Moynihan Report controversy. Focusing on competinTrade Review"The Moynihan Report is well-trodden historical ground, but Geary offers the most extensive and nuanced discussion to date of its intellectual, social, and political context and of its significant historical impact." * American Historical Review *"A concise, lucid, and wonderfully readable account. With remarkable acuity and grace, Beyond Civil Rights provides an utterly persuasive history of both the Moynihan Report and the ongoing argument about it." * Howard Brick, University of Michigan *"Daniel Geary provides a fresh portrait and insightful analysis of Daniel Patrick Moynihan during his heyday, and a nuanced framework for assessing the famous report and its wide-ranging impact-and more. Beyond Civil Rights is a path-breaking study of the limits of liberalism during a time of racial crisis and transformation." * Patricia Sullivan, University of South Carolina *"Written with an easy grace and accessibility, Beyond Civil Rights enriches our understanding of race politics, myth-making, and rhetorical brinksmanship over the last fifty years. Sophisticated and immensely enjoyable." * Jonathan Holloway, Yale University *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Crisis of Equality Chapter 1. The Liberal Mindset Chapter 2. Negro Equality—Dream or Delusion? Chapter 3. The New Racism Chapter 4. The Death of White Sociology Chapter 5. Feminism and the Nuclear Family Norm Chapter 6. From National Action to Benign Neglect Epilogue. A Mixed Legacy Notes Archival Collections Consulted Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Pulse of the People masterfully marries political psychology scholarship and research methods with the growing literature on the ever increasing impact of Hip-Hop culture both nationally and globally." * Melanye Price, Rutgers University *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Watch for the Hook Chapter 1. Behind the Music: Black Political Attitudes and Rap Music Chapter 2. Music and Political Resistance: The Cultural Foundation of Black Politics Chapter 3. It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop: Rap Music and Black Nationalism Chapter 4. Beyond the Music: Black Feminism and Rap Music Chapter 5. The Future of Politics: The Implications of Rap Music and Political Attitudes Conclusion. It's Still Bigger Than Hip-Hop: The Future of Rap and Politics Appendices 1. Political Rap Songs 2. HSAN and BPP Demands Notes Bibliography Discography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisAn illustrated, in-depth examintion of the avant-garde and politically radical Latino art of San Francisco's Mission DistrictIn The Heart of the Mission, Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission District, a longtime bohemian enclave in San Francisco, has served as an important place for an influential and largely ignored Latino arts movement from the 1960s to the present. Well before the anointment of the Mission School by art-world arbiters at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Latino artists, writers, poets, playwrights, performers, and filmmakers made the Mission their home and their muse. The Mission, home to Chileans, Cubans, Guatemalans, Mexican Americans, Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, and Salvadorans never represented a single Latino identity. In tracing the experiences of a diverse group of Latino artists from the 1940s to the turn of the century, Cordova connects wide-ranging aesthetics to a variety of social movements and activist Trade Review"Cary Cordova's The Heart of the Mission is a complex, necessary book . . . Cordova's impressive research, which includes extensive archival excavation, artist interviews, and urban fieldwork, reveals an important and previously unexplored history of local activism practiced through Latino poster art, which spread word of the struggles of insurgent movements such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; Salvadoran diasporic art; the cultural politics of Día de los Muertos; and the founding of galleries and community art centers." * Journal of American History *"A definitive history of Latina/o art, production and community formation in San Francisco's Mission District." * Social History *"Cordova's excellent book stands as a significant contribution to many fields, and scholars across disciplines will find tremendous value in it." * Western Historical Quarterly *"Cordova tells a deeply compelling story about social and culturaltransformation in the Mission District in the twentieth century. Her book is worth reading for anumber of reasons, not the least of which is that The Heart of the Mission fills important gaps inpopular narratives about the history of California, San Francisco, sixties radicalism, the lineage ofLatino creative culture in America, and even postmodernism . . . [T]he book is a powerful testimony to the historical influence ofSan Francisco's Latino artists and activists on the culture of the city. And, crucially, it contextualizesthe dramatic changes currently sweeping through the heart of the Mission and the fights that arebeing waged to stop them." * H-California *"This is a wonderful book that is felicitously written, passionately argued, and full of information that is otherwise difficult to find. Cary Cordova's study fills a major gap in the current literature on Latino arts movements in the United States, as well as in the cultural history of San Francisco and California." * Richard Cándida Smith, University of California, Berkeley *"Cary Cordova has unearthed some truly fascinating archival material. Challenging the dominance of a certain type of Chicano art and identity politics, she expands the chronology and geography of Latino Art in the United States to include 1950s tango and jazz and contemporary AIDS activism." * A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[An] important and fresh contribution to the study of African American literature, rereading the works of the canonical Douglass and turning our attention to lesser-known African American francophone poetry . . . Pratt offers [a] compelling and forceful theory and method that no doubt will shape the work of literary scholars and have the power to influence theorizations of African American history." * American Literature *"Pratt's scholarship is timely. As #BlackLivesMatter informs us, the struggle for racial justice in America continues . . . The Strangers Book is about African Americans writing about their experiences of an America that does not permit them to be seen as human. Revealing a complex network of relationships and texts, it offers an innovative framework to understand and read early African American literature. That these writers are communicating through varied kinds of storytelling points to one similarity across difference and time; that the figure of the 'strange negro' persists in the stories of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, or Freddie Gray, points to another." * MELUS *"A lot of academic monographs are credited with offering a critique, but The Strangers Book is the rare book that really and profoundly assesses the limits of what is thinkable. Like black lives, black texts matter. But it rings hollow to claim that both things matters without also disaffirming the existing structures of power-and the categories of person and text that power has established-that create the need to say such things in the first place. Like the Black Lives Matter movement, The Strangers Book offers a utopian affirmation of difference couched in a language of refusal, where the particular matters more than the universal toward which it supposedly should add." * Public Books *"The alternative humanism claimed by former slaves yields many corrective lessons for the present. Lloyd Pratt transforms our understanding of that archive by inserting the figure of the stranger into the interpretative frame. Energized by a host of newly unearthed discoveries, his innovative, absorbing book initiates a novel and urgent enquiry: the entanglement of race with various kinds of xenology. Ambitious and learned, this book will reshape the field of U.S. literary history." * Paul Gilroy, King's College London *"Lloyd Pratt's work addresses and rearticulates, in an exquisite way, current discussions of the status of the human in antebellum African American literature." * Branka Arsić, Columbia University *"The Strangers Book provides a bracing and unexpected perspective on literary history. As Pratt's chapters unfold, the reader begins to see how early African American letters can be read as offering new critical possibilities for Western literature as a whole." * Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction. Print and the Human Chapter 1. The Making of Self-Evidence Chapter 2. Frederick Douglass's Stranger-With-Thee Chapter 3. Les Apôtres de la Littérature and Les Cenelles Chapter 4. The Abundant Black Past Chapter 5. How to Read a Strangers Book Epilogue. Stranger Literature Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisLong before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near lakes, or close to the ocean. In those waterways, they became proficient in diverse maritime skills, while incorporating water and aquatics into spiritual understandings of the world. Transported to the Americas, slaves carried with them these West African skills and cultural values. Indeed, according to Kevin Dawson''s examination of water culture in the African diaspora, the aquatic abilities of people of African descent often surpassed those of Europeans and their descendants from the age of discovery until well into the nineteenth century.As Dawson argues, histories of slavery have largely chronicled the fields of the New World, whether tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, or cotton. However, most plantations were located near waterways to facilitate the transportation of goods to market, and large numbers of agricultural slaves had Trade Review"Kevin Dawson's masterly synthesis goes beyond filling a gap in maritime history: it reconfirms and expands a discourse on maritime traditions of Africans at home and abroad, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries." * The International Journal of Maritime History *"This is an important book in a number of ways. It displays the ways many enslaved Africans used the knowledge they brought with them to expand the space available to them. It gives us a picture of how aspects of slavery in one of the most coercive slave societies ever created were negotiated. It is also a contribution to aquatic history and culture informed by Kevin Dawson's passion for and understanding of aquatic life. In making his arguments, Dawson uses a wide range of sources and uses them well. Most important, he gives us a picture of those enslaved as agents, who used their knowledge and their skills to push the boundaries of their enslavement." * Early American Literature *"Kevin Dawson's Undercurrents of Power is important. More than perhaps any study in recent memory, it brings the existence, value, and meaning of water in the African diaspora to the forefront of Atlantic cultural, social, and economic development. In a broad,sweeping narrative, Dawson covers remarkable ground, crisscrossing the Atlantic as he draws together hundreds of examples of how water defined the pre-slavery lives of Africans forced into the Atlantic slave trade and how it helped diverse peoples and cultures identify themselves, individually and collectively, in the whirlwind and trauma of enslavement. The work explores the complexities of honor, warfare, social status, youth, sex, technology, and leisure and how each interacted with, and indeed structured itself around, water and aquatic spaces." * The Journal of Southern History *"Stunning . . . Undercurrents of Power brings to light the various aquatic traditions of Africans and Diasporans working, cultivating, and negotiating the riparian, oceanic, lake, and swamp biomes both in the context of Africa and in the environments they encountered throughout the Atlantic and into the Americas . . . In the process of opening various kinds of waterscapes to historical analysis, Dawson fundamentally reimagines the cultural dynamics shaping the Americas." * Black Perspectives *"Undercurrents of Power is a significant intervention into the fields of Early Vast America, African Diaspora, African American, and Caribbean histories. By focusing on African aquatic cultural and material contributions, Dawson rescues African maritime narratives in the early Atlantic World, which have been grossly ignored or silenced. It is a must-read for scholars and graduate students in these respective fields. The prose is captivating and clear." * Journal of Early American History *"Kevin Dawson offers the remarkable untold history of the significance of aquatic culture in the African diaspora. Undercurrents of Power opens up a new and exciting aspect of slaves' experience, providing a crucially important piece of the history of slave life and labor in the Americas." * James Sidbury, Rice University *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Waterscapes of the African Diaspora PART I. SWIMMING CULTURE Chapter 1. Atlantic African Aquatic Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Chapter 2. Cultural Meanings of Recreational Swimming and Surfing Chapter 3. Aquatic Sports and Performance Rituals: Gender, Bravery, and Honor Chapter 4. History from Below: Enslaved Underwater Divers Chapter 5. Undercurrents of Power: Challenging Racial Hierarchies from Below PART II. CANOE CULTURE Chapter 6. African Canoe-Makers: Constructing Floating Cultures Chapter 7. Mountains Divide and Rivers Unite: Atlantic African Canoemen Chapter 8. Maritime Continuities: African Canoes on New World Waters Chapter 9. The Floating Economies of Slaves and Slaveholders Chapter 10. Sacred Vessels, Sacred Waters: The Cultural Meanings of Dugout Canoes Chapter 11. A World Afloat: Mobile Slave Communities Chapter 12. The Watermen's Song: Canoemen's Aural Waterscapes Conclusion. A Sea Change in Atlantic History Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Greer's book tells the story of black civil-rights-era entrepreneurs who cajoled American corporations into catering to black people-for better or for worse. Her scholarship helps readers reframe the protest-centric narrative of the civil rights movement by teasing out how black capitalists' products and public relations campaigns leveraged major corporations like Standard Oil and Coca-Cola to support racial justice. However, far beyond the purview of voting rights and desegregation, this history also illuminates the origins of the racialized marketing that companies have employed to profiteer off black communities for generations." * The Nation *"Represented not only provides an important intervention in Black entrepreneurial history but also offers insights into how Black entrepreneurship and image creation aided in the reimagining of African American citizenship during the postwar struggle for civil rights . . . Greer uses an array of sources, but none more effectively than the advertising and marketing images displayed throughout the book. She uses these visual representations of Blackness to show how African Americans employed these images in their quest to market themselves as American citizens. At the core of the story of the African American struggle for freedom has been the quest for citizenship . . . A part of what Greer does masterfully in Represented is to challenge scholars to reconsider the fronts on which those battles have been fought." * The Journal of African American History *"Brenna Wynn Greer reveals how corporations and professional image-makers gave us some of our earliest photographic visions of freedom, showing how they captured, in the process, our most iconic snapshots of the black freedom struggle. Black capitalism and black activism have long been part of a single history. Represented now gifts us that history-timely and transformative-in a single, important book." * N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida *"Represented presents a powerful, critical, and wholly original analysis of the relationships between race, capital, and citizenship. Through a sophisticated and subtle reading of history, and a close examination of prominent black media makers, Brenna Wynn Greer offers an interpretation that rightly positions black people as shapers of American economy and postwar public culture. The book is a sorely needed contribution to the literature on black capitalism, media culture, and civil rights activism." * Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond *"Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Represented is a groundbreaking, exemplary book that makes a field-defining intervention into the relationship between visual culture, capitalism, and citizenship." * Elspeth Brown, University of Toronto *"A wonderful and pioneering book that raises fresh questions about business, civil rights, and African American history. Complicating what it means to be a black capitalist, Brenna Wynn Greer charts a new path with her innovative framing of 'Civil Rights work.'" * Quincy Mills, Vassar College *

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents an ethnographic study of Dominicans in New York City through their participation in small businesses. Krohn-Hansen demonstrates how Dominican enterprises work, how people find economic openings, and how Dominicans who own small commercial ventures have formed political associations to promote and defend their interests.Trade Review"Making New York Dominican is truly groundbreaking work on an important Latin American immigrant group. In Christian Krohn-Hansen's vivid, theoretically sophisticated ethnography, business is the central focus: how it works, how Dominican business owners break in and succeed, how they form political and cultural associations that sustain them and further their success, and how the impress of these businesses has made its mark on New York neighborhoods and political economy over three decades." * Roger Sanjek, author of The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I 1. From Quisqueya to New York City 2. Origin Stories PART II 3. From Bodegas to Supermarkets 4. From Livery Cabs to Black Cars PART III 5. Dominicans and Hispanics 6. Up Against the Big Money 7. In Search of Dignity Conclusion Notes References Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisJames M. Glaser and Timothy J. Ryan vividly show how political strategies can counteract the impulse to think about racial issues in terms of winners and losers. Their problem-focused research shows how communities can build majority support for minority interests, even in the face of emotionally charged group conflicts.Trade Review"A substantive, intellectually engaging read. Changing Minds, If Not Hearts challenges the idea that intractable racial attitudes explain most political outcomes and offers compelling evidence that framing issues to defuse group conflict may successfully address some of the systemic obstacles that racial minorities face in democracies." * Melissa Nobles, Massachusetts Institute of Technology *Table of ContentsChapter 1. Burdens of Our Past Chapter 2. Ballot Architecture and the Building of Schools Chapter 3. Following Neighbors, If Not Leaders Chapter 4. Remorse, Retribution, and Restoration Chapter 5. A Panoply of Preferences Chapter 6. A Spotlight on Race Neutrality Chapter 7. Changing Minds, If Not Hearts Notes References Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe Strangers Book explores how a constellation of nineteenth-century African American writers radically reframed the terms of humanism by redefining what it meant to be a stranger.Trade Review"[An] important and fresh contribution to the study of African American literature, rereading the works of the canonical Douglass and turning our attention to lesser-known African American francophone poetry . . . Pratt offers [a] compelling and forceful theory and method that no doubt will shape the work of literary scholars and have the power to influence theorizations of African American history." * American Literature *"Pratt's scholarship is timely. As #BlackLivesMatter informs us, the struggle for racial justice in America continues . . . The Strangers Book is about African Americans writing about their experiences of an America that does not permit them to be seen as human. Revealing a complex network of relationships and texts, it offers an innovative framework to understand and read early African American literature. That these writers are communicating through varied kinds of storytelling points to one similarity across difference and time; that the figure of the 'strange negro' persists in the stories of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, or Freddie Gray, points to another." * MELUS *"A lot of academic monographs are credited with offering a critique, but The Strangers Book is the rare book that really and profoundly assesses the limits of what is thinkable. Like black lives, black texts matter. But it rings hollow to claim that both things matters without also disaffirming the existing structures of power-and the categories of person and text that power has established-that create the need to say such things in the first place. Like the Black Lives Matter movement, The Strangers Book offers a utopian affirmation of difference couched in a language of refusal, where the particular matters more than the universal toward which it supposedly should add." * Public Books *"The alternative humanism claimed by former slaves yields many corrective lessons for the present. Lloyd Pratt transforms our understanding of that archive by inserting the figure of the stranger into the interpretative frame. Energized by a host of newly unearthed discoveries, his innovative, absorbing book initiates a novel and urgent enquiry: the entanglement of race with various kinds of xenology. Ambitious and learned, this book will reshape the field of U.S. literary history." * Paul Gilroy, King's College London *"Lloyd Pratt's work addresses and rearticulates, in an exquisite way, current discussions of the status of the human in antebellum African American literature." * Branka Arsić, Columbia University *"The Strangers Book provides a bracing and unexpected perspective on literary history. As Pratt's chapters unfold, the reader begins to see how early African American letters can be read as offering new critical possibilities for Western literature as a whole." * Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction. Print and the Human Chapter 1. The Making of Self-Evidence Chapter 2. Frederick Douglass's Stranger-With-Thee Chapter 3. Les Apôtres de la Littérature and Les Cenelles Chapter 4. The Abundant Black Past Chapter 5. How to Read a Strangers Book Epilogue. Stranger Literature Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe Heart of the Mission is the first in-depth examination of the Latino arts renaissance in San Francisco's Mission District in the latter twentieth century. Using evocative oral histories and archival research, Cordova highlights the rise of a vibrant intellectual community grounded in avant-garde aesthetics and radical politics.Trade Review"Cary Cordova's The Heart of the Mission is a complex, necessary book . . . Cordova's impressive research, which includes extensive archival excavation, artist interviews, and urban fieldwork, reveals an important and previously unexplored history of local activism practiced through Latino poster art, which spread word of the struggles of insurgent movements such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; Salvadoran diasporic art; the cultural politics of Día de los Muertos; and the founding of galleries and community art centers." * Journal of American History *"A definitive history of Latina/o art, production and community formation in San Francisco's Mission District." * Social History *"Cordova's excellent book stands as a significant contribution to many fields, and scholars across disciplines will find tremendous value in it." * Western Historical Quarterly *"Cordova tells a deeply compelling story about social and culturaltransformation in the Mission District in the twentieth century. Her book is worth reading for anumber of reasons, not the least of which is that The Heart of the Mission fills important gaps inpopular narratives about the history of California, San Francisco, sixties radicalism, the lineage ofLatino creative culture in America, and even postmodernism . . . [T]he book is a powerful testimony to the historical influence ofSan Francisco's Latino artists and activists on the culture of the city. And, crucially, it contextualizesthe dramatic changes currently sweeping through the heart of the Mission and the fights that arebeing waged to stop them." * H-California *"This is a wonderful book that is felicitously written, passionately argued, and full of information that is otherwise difficult to find. Cary Cordova's study fills a major gap in the current literature on Latino arts movements in the United States, as well as in the cultural history of San Francisco and California." * Richard Cándida Smith, University of California, Berkeley *"Cary Cordova has unearthed some truly fascinating archival material. Challenging the dominance of a certain type of Chicano art and identity politics, she expands the chronology and geography of Latino Art in the United States to include 1950s tango and jazz and contemporary AIDS activism." * A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blain illuminates an oft-ignored period of black nationalist and internationalist activism in the U.S.: the Great Depression, World War II, and early Cold War. Her engrossing study shows that much of this activism was led by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women. . . . Adding essential chapters to the story of this movement, Blain expands current understanding of the central roles played by female activists at home and overseas." * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *"In a remarkable act of historical recovery, Blain expertly traces the vital role women played in shaping black nationalist politics between the 1920s and 1960s. . . . Essential reading to anyone wanting to better understand the history of race, empire, and imperialism in the twentieth century. Perhaps most important though, Blain provides us with a timely reminder of the militancy and tenacity of the women who were at the heart of black nationalist politics. . . . These women created the ideological and practical tools for future generations of activists to take up the global struggle against white supremacy." * H-Diplo *"Set the World on Fire is history at its very best. Keisha Blain has given us an unobstructed window into the minds of black nationalist women. Sharp voices and gripping stories reveal a philosophical flexibility paired with an inflexible challenge to global white supremacy." * Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning *"Set the World on Fire shows us what is hidden in plain sight. More importantly, she lays bare the foundational elements of black nationalist thought and practice. In short, women were not simply helpmates to men, but the creators and constructors of the intellectual, ideological, and organizational underpinnings of the black nationalist project in the 20th century." * Public Books *"Keisha Blain has dug deeply into twentieth-century history to reveal the personal and political lives of African diaspora women determined to Set the World on Fire as they walked a fine line between leading and adhering to the black nationalist dictate of masculine leadership. Drawing upon a range of materials, including FBI files, personal letters, newspapers, and federal census records, Blain details every step of these women's organizing efforts and their pan-African visions." * Ula Taylor, author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam *"Set the World on Fire illuminates a dark though important area of history. Deftly written, it is also a signal contribution to African American studies and women's studies. It shines brightening light on a previously-and scandalously-neglected topic." * Gerald Horne, author of Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Women Pioneers in the Garvey Movement Chapter 2. The Struggle for Black Emigration Chapter 3. Organizing in the Jim Crow South Chapter 4. Dreaming of Liberia Chapter 5. Pan-Africanism and Anticolonial Politics Chapter 6. Breaks, Transitions, and Continuities Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blatt has provided a service to intellectual historians. This well-documented and clearly written book achieves its objectives by squarely positioning racist assumptions at the heart of political science's origins in the modern academy." * The Journal of American History *"[N]ot only a historical work that traces the foundations of racialism within the discipline of political science but is also a compelling account about the disavowal and continued importance of race in politics...those trained in political science (undergraduates, graduates) and those teaching political thought would do well to stock Race and the Making of American Political Science on their bookshelves. " * Journal of African American History *"Jessica Blatt's groundbreaking book explores the leading thinkers who shaped the foundation of the political science discipline . . . [T]his book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the merger between science and politics. It makes a convincing argument that racialism and its various manifestations (White supremacy, colonialism/neocolonialism, imperialism,evolution, and racial psychometrics) have been instrumental to shaping political science." * History of Education Quarterly *"Jessica Blatt has delivered a masterful account of the illiberal fiber inherent in American political reality. That is, how a country committed to democratic equality and freedom has invested so much ink, blood, and money in ideas of racial difference to produce a conjoined history of unfreedoms and massive inequalities. She brings history to life on the page in her compelling telling of the ways that key intellectuals shaped the early field of political science through varied but sustained commitments to normalized white supremacy. Blatt has opened the way for a watershed reflective moment in her field-and beyond." * Duana Fullwiley, Stanford University *"Race and the Making of American Political Science is one of those rare books that makes an important scholarly contribution and a significant intervention in civic discourse. In examining carefully how racialist ideologies shaped the first half century of American political science, Blatt also provides a richly theorized and historically grounded account of what 'race' is as an ideology of essential human difference, how it has evolved, and how its premises continue to shape academic and popular discourses. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the social sciences and anyone concerned with making sense of race ideology and how it works in our society." * Adolph Reed, Jr., University of Pennsylvania *"In an exhilarating story, which never flags in energy or excitement, Jessica Blatt shows how foundational racism and concepts of race were to American political science, not just at the beginning but in its heyday as a social science. A pioneering work exploding with insights and discoveries on every page, her book is also a cautionary tale for today, when academics and journalists increasingly turn to race as a category of political explanation, unwittingly repeating the maneuvers that Blatt so vividly documents and describes." * Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center *"Jessica Blatt has written a fine book. She is correct that race is a dimension of disciplinary history that has not been seriously explored. Everyone notices the founding generation's Teutonism, but none of the major historical studies have taken it seriously as a species of racialism or examined its lingering consequences." * Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University *"Race and the Making of American Political Science illuminates key elements in the past of American political science-the founding of the discipline around a core racialist scheme and the subsequent evolution of ideas about race within the discipline as practitioners adapted to the rise of U.S. power in the world." * Howard Brick, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. "The White Man's Mission": John W. Burgess and the Columbia School of Political Science Chapter 2. "All Things Lawful Are Not Expedient": The American Political Science Association Considers Jim Crow Chapter 3. Twentieth-Century Problems: Administering an American Empire Chapter 4. The Journal of Race Development: Evolution and Uplift Chapter 5. Laying Specters to Rest: Political Science Encounters the Boasian Critique of Racial Anthropology Chapter 6. Finding New Premises: Race Science, Philanthropy, and the Institutional Establishment of Political Science Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Colonial Complexions offers an important new angle on the processes through which racial categories became entrenched in American and Western thought and culture . . . [and] a badly needed and deeply insightful analysis of a level of race-making that falls between high scientific discourse and social life . . . Sharon Block reveals a too-often hidden and absolutely crucial current of racial thought and practice in early America." * Journal of Early American History *"Colonial Complexions is a crucial contribution to the history of race and a noteworthy model for digital age historical methodology." * Black Perspectives *"Part of Block's purpose in Colonial Complexions is to prompt historians to think more carefully about echoing without question the descriptions and classifications we find in our sources . . . .Colonial Complexions contributes mightily to the literature on the social construction of race by illuminating the very real effects of those constructions." * Reviews in American History *"In her deeply researched text, author Sharon Block traces the historical development of ideas surrounding racial characterizations and the body. Colonial Complexions uses thousands of runaway advertisements for captives and servants to argue for a more nuanced understanding of racial categories in eighteenth-century America...Colonial Complexions will likely prove intellectually generative. Block’s ambitious text provides a significant scholarly intervention and forces historians to think carefully about the need to historicize concepts of race, complexion, and skin color when examining early American history. " * Journal of African American History *""Colonial Complexions has done important work to hone our understanding of the role of colonial advertisements in western-Atlantic racial formations, and Block has assembled a valuable archive that remains ripe for future inquiry into the interlinked processes of human monetization and racialization during the period just before the founding of a republic still in their thrall." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"[T]his is an admirable work of scholarship that provides thoughtful and thorough statistical analysis of a telling but previously neglected archive. The result is to buttress the recent scholarly understanding of the inchoate nature of racial ideology (and even bodily perception) in the third quarter of the eighteenth century in British North America. As much of the scholarly work toward redefining our understandings of race in this key period has been done by literary and theoretically oriented scholars, the support of Block's careful statistical analysis, and her compelling presentation of it, should prove invaluable to the ongoing debate on this always contentious issue."" * Early American Literature *"By employing digital methods to interrogate the process of race-making in the eighteenth-century, Colonial Complexions makes visible the cultural worldview underlying racial formations and pushes scholarship in exciting new directions." * Journal of Southern History *"In Colonial Complexions, historian Sharon Block offers a subtle and profound reading of the processes of race-making in colonial North America. Drawing on thousands of advertisements for the return of servant and enslaved laborers of African, European, and Native American descent, Block offers a careful and critical reading of how colonial slave and contract owners consolidated racial meaning on bodies through specific language, evaluation, and the naturalization of status over the eighteenth century. After reading this book, scholars will be compelled to deconstruct colonial terms of racial designation that have been uncritically reproduced and to change the way we think and write about race and racial meaning in the past and the effects of these terms in our present." * Marisa Fuentes, Rutgers University *"A powerful history of complexion and how it mobilized across race, labor, and hierarchy in colonial slavery. Colonial Complexions asks us to think carefully about the processes of race-making. Sharon Block's engagement with the history of the body and the meanings ascribed to color represents foundational work in the history of racial formation and power in early America." * Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University *"Colonial Complexions is remarkable. Through an astonishing amount of research and the analysis of thousands of advertisements for missing persons in colonial newspapers, Sharon Block determines when and how 'race' acquired its meaning and basic equation with slavery. In this innovative way, she argues that race and slavery came to be intertwined through seemingly innocuous descriptions." * Elizabeth Reis, Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Complicating Humors and Rethinking Complexion Chapter 2. Shaping Bodies in Print: Labor and Health Chapter 3. Coloring Bodies: Naturalized Incompatibilities Chapter 4. Categorizing Bodies: Race, Place, and the Pursuit of Freedom Chapter 5. Written by and on the Body: Racialization of Affects and Effects Epilogue Appendices 1. Advertisements for Runaways: Sources and Methodology 2. Graphic Overview of Advertisements for Runaways 3. Newspapers with Advertisements for Runaways (1750-75) Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisA constant feature of Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean was the dedication of panegyric texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and other languages to men of several ranks: scholars, communal leaders, courtiers, merchants, patrons, and poets. Although the imagery of nature and eroticism in the preludes to these poems is often studied, the substance of what follows is generally neglected, as it is perceived to be repetitive, obsequious, and less aesthetically interesting than other types of poetry from the period. In Dominion Built of Praise, Jonathan Decter demurs. As is the case with visual portraits, panegyrics operate according to a code of cultural norms that tell us at least as much about the society that produced them as the individuals they portray. Looking at the phenomenon of panegyric in Mediterranean Jewish culture from several overlapping perspectives—social, historical, ethical, poetic, political, and theological—he finds that they offer representatTrade Review"Dominion Built of Praise represents an original and comprehensive diachronic study of medieval Hebrew poetry of praise, how and why it was deployed, and what religious and literary intellectuals thought about it. Readers of medieval Hebrew literature and comparatists are indebted to Decter for inviting us to return to the panegyric as an artistically and conceptually complex cultural artifact and for opening important and fascinating new lines of inquiry into its discourse." * Speculum *"Decter has produced a valuable book which deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of praise poetry in the Jewish Mediterranean in every respect, in relation to power and authority within Jewish society and beyond. It is an excellently written book in which formal data and personal opinions are fully justified by original sources and relevant scholarly studies. It is a must for anyone who has questions about the meaning of the art of praise poetry in medieval times." * English Historical Review *"Decter’s book is the rigorous product of a fruitful and well-planned study of the genre of panegyrics. He offers a journey through the genre, focusing on key aspects, authors, and works to understand the differences across time and space. His superb knowledge of the medieval Islamic world allows the analysis to be conducted against the background of the Arabo-Islamic intellectual trends that inform and shed light on the development of the Hebrew cultural production. In addition, Decter manages to enrich the discussion by providing well-selected examples. There is no doubt that Dominion Built of Praise successfully fills the conspicuous gap in our knowledge of the panegyric genre within the history of Hebrew literature." * Religion & Literature *"Dominion Built of Praise is clear and surefooted, its historical contextualization deft, and its revisionism refreshing and never heavy-handed. Jonathan Decter has a profound and intimate knowledge of medieval Hebrew poems and other texts, many of them unpublished and all of them in some ways overlooked. Medieval Hebrew praise poetry has never been taken so seriously, and Decter demonstrates why it should be." * Marina Rustow, Princeton University *"Dominion Built of Praise represents a very important diachronic study of the relatively neglected genre of medieval Hebrew praise poetry. Customarily treated or dismissed as highly styled in form and thoroughly conventional in content, Hebrew panegyric in Jonathan Decter's highly skilled hands speaks directly and indirectly, through language and representation, to communal leadership, authority, and legitimacy. Thanks to Decter's wide-ranging perspective, Dominion Built of Praise extends beyond al-Andalus to mapping and analyzing Hebrew literary creativity in Christian Europe, Italy, and other Mediterranean lands." * Ross Brann, Cornell University *"Panegyric is both central to the medieval Jewish literary tradition and aesthetically challenging. Jonathan Decter explores how it operated within a politically dominion-less Jewish community and how it was used to negotiate between the Jewish community or its members and the ruling Muslim or Christian power. Drawing on original textual research in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Castilian, he has produced a study that contributes to all of those fields." * Suzanne Stetkevych, Georgetown University *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Performance Matters: Between Public Acclamation and Epistolary Exchange Chapter 2. Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture Chapter 3. "Humble Like the Humble One": The Language of Jewish Political Legitimacy Chapter 4. "Sefarad Boasts over Shinar": Mediterranean Regionalism in Jewish Panegyric Chapter 5. "A Word Aptly Spoken": The Ethics of Praise Chapter 6. "A Cedar Whose Stature in the Garden of Wisdom . . . ": Hyperbole, the Imaginary, and the Art of Magnification Chapter 7. In Praise of God, in Praise of Man: Issues in Political Theology Chapter 8. "May His Book Be Burnt Even Though It Contains Your Praise!": Jewish Panegyric in the Christian Mediterranean Chapter 9. The Other "Great Eagle": Interreligious Panegyrics and the Limits of Interpretation Afterword Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship. Grounded in political participation, mutual aid, critique and revolution, and the myriad daily interactions between people living in the same spaces, citizenship, they argued, is not defined by who one is but, rather, by what one does. In The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires examines the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship, beginning in 1787, with the framing of the federal Constitution and the founding of the Free African Society by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and ending in 1861, with the onset of the Civil War. Between these two points he recovers understudied figures such as William J. Wilson, whose 1859 Afric-American Picture Gallery appeared in seven installments iTrade Review"n The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires analyzes how early Black newspapers, pamphlets, and the published proceedings of the Black conventions gave birth to new theories and practices of citizenship...Spires’s recovery of independent Black theories of citizenship is intellectually sophisticated and highly original. Spires offers a “reparative reading” of African American ideas about citizenship that go beyond the country’s founding ideals of civic republicanism." * The New York Review of Books *""[E]ngaging, powerful, and absolutely necessary . . . In The Practice of Citizenship, Spires theorizes alongside some of the most brilliant and challenging writers of the nineteenth century. But with an ease made all the more impressive because of its seeming effortlessness, Spires has written a detailed and elegant book that offers his readers a well cleared pathway into the world of black theorizing in the nineteenth century, and thus provided us with an opportunity to learn from activist-writers who developed and enacted practices of citizenship that engaged with but refused to be bound by the rules and regulations of a white supremacist state. And as an interpreter of and guide through these practices, Spires models for us black theorizing in the twenty-first century, an approach that is at once scholarly method and ethical imperative. An inspired and inspiring work filled with theories and practices that are as necessary now as they were then, The Practice of Citizenship is, in short, essential reading." * Reviews in American History *"[A]n intelligent and well-researched analysis of how writers of African descent in the New World understood and demonstrated citizenship from the late eighteenth century until the dawn of the Civil War. The Practice of Citizenship offers a robust foundation on which future generations of teachers, students, and researchers could learn more about the creativity and resolve of the African diaspora in its long quest for a citizenship they deserve rightfully and unquestionably to call their own." * Early American Literature *"The Practice of Citizenship is a rare and important book . . . In this beautifully written and theoretically sophisticated study, the author chronicles how Black people conceived and practiced citizenship in spaces including-and perhaps especially-beyond the nation-state form . . . It is as much a theory of contested spaces as it is a philosophy of community." * Modern Philology *"Derrick Spires’ The Practice of Citizenship is a beautifully written and brilliantly evocative work that centres print culture in the early United States as a site for the theorization and practice of citizenship for Black people…Reflecting on this book in the modern era, it is evident that there are historical carryovers as regards the theory and practice of Black citizenship which mark Spires’ work as urgent and necessary in the current moment. It would do well to recall that citizenship ideals and practices advocated by Black thinkers in the early United States, such as collective power, networks and neighborhoods, and critical citizenship, still remain vital in the ongoing twenty-first-century movement for recognition of Black citizenship in the United States, both in theory and in practice." * American Nineteenth Century History *"Derrick Spires’s comprehensive, wide-ranging analysis of citizenship in early African American print culture is a magnificent study in the field. It will stand among the milestone studies of early African American literature and print culture among this generation of scholars. His book positions African American ideas of citizenship between the American Revolution and Civil War as nuanced, protean, and evolving. He proposes the theory—brilliant, generative, carefully elaborated, and conversation-shifting—that African Americans claimed and constructed the role of citizenship as one entwined in action, in the process of doing everyday civil, political, familial, and commercial work in their communities." * American Periodicals *"Offering a richly immersive experience, The Practice of Citizenship displaces well-known representative figures, foregrounds a diverse community of letters, and significantly increases our understanding of African American discourses of citizenship." * Jeannine DeLombard, University of California, Santa Barbara *"Derrick R. Spires orchestrates insightful readings of both the most important and underutilized touchstones in early Black print studies like a master conductor. By having an array of early Black authors, events, and exchanges in play together and by amplifying how early Black writers and communities created, enlivened, and sustained collective advocacy, Spires's work is poised to significantly expand the canon of nineteenth-century texts scholars write about and teach. The Practice of Citizenship is a considerable achievement." * P. Gabrielle Foreman, University of Delaware *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Black Theorizing: Reimagining a "Beautiful but Baneful Object" Chapter 1. Neighborly Citizenship in Absalom Jones and Richard Allen's A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late and Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793 Chapter 2. Circulating Citizenship in the Black State Conventions of the 1840s Chapter 3. Economic Citizenship in Ethiop and Communipaw's New York Chapter 4. Critical Citizenship in the Anglo-African Magazine, 1859-1860 Chapter 5. Pedagogies of Revolutionary Citizenship Conclusion. "To Praise Our Bridges" Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn 1948, Moss Kendrix, a former New Deal public relations officer, founded a highly successful, Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm, the flagship client of which was the Coca-Cola Company. As the first black pitchman for Coca-Cola, Kendrix found his way into the rarefied world of white corporate America. His personal phone book also included the names of countless black celebrities, such as bandleader Duke Ellington, singer-actress Pearl Bailey, and boxer Joe Louis, with whom he had built relationships in the course of developing marketing campaigns for his numerous federal and corporate clients. Kendrix, along with Ebony publisher John H. Johnson and Life photographer Gordon Parks, recognized that, in the image-saturated world of postwar America, media in all its forms held greater significance for defining American citizenship than ever before. For these imagemakers, the visual representation of African Americans as good citizens was good business.In <Trade Review"Greer's book tells the story of black civil-rights-era entrepreneurs who cajoled American corporations into catering to black people-for better or for worse. Her scholarship helps readers reframe the protest-centric narrative of the civil rights movement by teasing out how black capitalists' products and public relations campaigns leveraged major corporations like Standard Oil and Coca-Cola to support racial justice. However, far beyond the purview of voting rights and desegregation, this history also illuminates the origins of the racialized marketing that companies have employed to profiteer off black communities for generations." * The Nation *"Represented not only provides an important intervention in Black entrepreneurial history but also offers insights into how Black entrepreneurship and image creation aided in the reimagining of African American citizenship during the postwar struggle for civil rights . . . Greer uses an array of sources, but none more effectively than the advertising and marketing images displayed throughout the book. She uses these visual representations of Blackness to show how African Americans employed these images in their quest to market themselves as American citizens. At the core of the story of the African American struggle for freedom has been the quest for citizenship . . . A part of what Greer does masterfully in Represented is to challenge scholars to reconsider the fronts on which those battles have been fought." * The Journal of African American History *"Brenna Wynn Greer reveals how corporations and professional image-makers gave us some of our earliest photographic visions of freedom, showing how they captured, in the process, our most iconic snapshots of the black freedom struggle. Black capitalism and black activism have long been part of a single history. Represented now gifts us that history-timely and transformative-in a single, important book." * N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida *"Represented presents a powerful, critical, and wholly original analysis of the relationships between race, capital, and citizenship. Through a sophisticated and subtle reading of history, and a close examination of prominent black media makers, Brenna Wynn Greer offers an interpretation that rightly positions black people as shapers of American economy and postwar public culture. The book is a sorely needed contribution to the literature on black capitalism, media culture, and civil rights activism." * Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond *"Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Represented is a groundbreaking, exemplary book that makes a field-defining intervention into the relationship between visual culture, capitalism, and citizenship." * Elspeth Brown, University of Toronto *"A wonderful and pioneering book that raises fresh questions about business, civil rights, and African American history. Complicating what it means to be a black capitalist, Brenna Wynn Greer charts a new path with her innovative framing of 'Civil Rights work.'" * Quincy Mills, Vassar College *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brown’s ingenious escape from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, by mailing himself in a wooden postal crate to abolitionists in Philadelphia, was unique and well documented. But that is not the story that most interests the author of this elegant cultural history. Cutter focuses on how Brown turned his experience in slavery into performance art on various tracks in many different locales" * Pennsylvania Heritage *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Abbreviations for Archives Consulted Introduction. The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown, the Man Who Mailed Himself to Freedom Chapter 1. Slavery and Freedom in US Visual Culture: The Performative Personae of William Wells Brown, William and Ellen Craft, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth Chapter 2. Becoming Box Brown, 1815–1857 Chapter 3. Performing Fugitivity: Henry Box Brown on the Nineteenth-Century British Stage, 1857 Chapter 4. Performing New Panoramas, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, and Second Sight, England, 1857–1875 Chapter 5. Canada, the United States, and Beyond: Performing Slavery and Freedom, 1875–1897 Chapter 6. The Absent Presence: Henry Box Brown in Contemporary Museums, Memorials, and Visual Art Chapter 7. Playing in the Archives: Box Brown in Contemporary Children’s Literature and Visual Poetry Coda. The Resilience of Box Brown and the Afterlives of Slavery Appendix. Selected Contemporary Creative Works About Henry Box Brown Notes Index

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisTrade Review""Although scholars and lay persons alike most often think of Washington as an educator, this impressive text reveals that his business ideas and practices have had a much greater and longer impact on Americans, especially African Americans.""--Kenneth Hamilton, Southern Methodist University

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Book SynopsisThe chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism - a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, arguing that Reconstruction was, quite simply, a disaster, and that the civil rights movement triumphed despite it, not because of it.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“The detail of the discussion, the reliance on con­siderable primary evidence, and the overall contribution of the understand­ing of the develop­ment of southern education make this a valuable addition to the historical literature on the South, Highly recommended.” - Choice“The first comprehensive picture of the evolution of the programme from its origins at Tuskegee Institute in the 1910s until its termi­nation in 1932, Hoffschwelle assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the programme and its larger significance for the status of Af­rican Americans and southern race relations in the early twentieth century.” - American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisWhat defines a city’s public space? Who designates such areas, who determines their uses, and who gets to use them? Robert Cassanello uses nineteenth-century Jacksonville as both backdrop and springboard to explore social transformation in Florida and the South. This is the first book to focus on the emergence of African American public life in Jacksonville between Reconstruction and the 1920s.

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