Search results for ""the university of north carolina press""

Oil palms are ubiquitous--grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in scores of packaged products, from lipstick and soap to margarine and cookies. And as Jonathan E. Robins shows, sweeping social transformations carried the plant around the planet. First brought to the global stage in the holds of slave ships, palm oil became a quintessential commodity in the Industrial Revolution. Imperialists hungry for cheap fat subjugated Africa's oil palm landscapes and the people who worked them. In the twentieth century, the World Bank promulgated oil palm agriculture as a panacea to rural development in Southeast Asia. As plantation companies tore into rainforests, evicting farmers in the name of progress, the oil palm continued its rise to dominance, sparking new controversies over trade, land and labor rights, human health, and the environment. By telling the story of the oil palm across multiple centuries and continents, Robins demonstrates how the fruits of an African palm tree became a key commodity in the story of global capitalism, beginning in the eras of slavery and imperialism, persisting through decolonization, and stretching to the present day.

Read more less

Common views of religion typically focus on the beliefs and meanings derived from revealed scriptures, ideas, and doctrines. David Morgan has led the way in radically broadening that framework to encompass the understanding that religions are fundamentally embodied, material forms of practice. This concise primer shows readers how to study what has come to be termed material religion-the ways religious meaning is enacted in the material world.Material religion includes the things people wear, eat, sing, touch, look at, create, and avoid. It also encompasses the places where religion and the social realities of everyday life, including gender, class, and race, intersect in physical ways. This interdisciplinary approach brings religious studies into conversation with art history, anthropology, and other fields. In the book, Morgan lays out a range of theories, terms, and concepts and shows how they work together to center materiality in the study of religion. Integrating carefully curated visual evidence, Morgan then applies these ideas and methods to case studies across a variety of religious traditions, modeling step-by-step analysis and emphasizing the importance of historical context. The Thing about Religion will be an essential tool for experts and students alike.

Read more less

How much sex should a person have? With whom? What do we make of people who choose not to have sex at all? As present as these questions are today, they were subjects of intense debate in the early American republic. In this richly textured history, Kara French investigates ideas about, and practices of, sexual restraint to better understand the sexual dimensions of American identity in the antebellum United States. French considers three groups of Americans-Shakers, Catholic priests and nuns, and followers of sexual reformer Sylvester Graham-whose sexual abstinence provoked almost as much social, moral, and political concern as the idea of sexual excess. Examining private diaries and letters, visual culture and material artifacts, and a range of published works, French reveals how people practicing sexual restraint became objects of fascination, ridicule, and even violence in nineteenth-century American culture. Against Sex makes clear that in assessing the history of sexuality, an expansive view of sexual practice that includes abstinence and restraint can shed important new light on histories of society, culture, and politics.

Read more less

Covering everything from the Old Well to the Speaker Ban and more, UNC A to Z is a concise, easy-to-read introduction to the nation's first public university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Perfect for new students getting to know the campus or alumni who want to learn more about their alma mater, this richly illustrated reference contains more than 350 entries packed with fascinating facts, interesting stories, and little-known histories of the people, places, and events that have shaped the Carolina we know today.With histories of campus buildings like Old East, gathering places like the Pit, and the many student traditions like the Cardboard Club, the Cake Race, and High Noon, UNC A to Z is the book every Tar Heel will want to keep close at hand.

Read more less

North Carolina possesses an astonishingly rich array of natural wonders. Building on this abundance, April C. Smith passionately seeks to open the world of nature to everyone. Her popular science guidebook features thirty sites across North Carolina that are perfect for exploration and hands-on learning about the Earth and the environment. A stellar group of naturalists and educators narrate each adventure, explaining key scientific concepts by showing you exactly where and how to look. This guidebook is for anyone-teens, kids, families, hikers, teachers, students, and tourists alike-who loves to be outside while learning. All you need to plan trips and discover new attractions Organized by the state's Mountain, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain regions The 30 adventures spotlight wonderful places to hike, fascinating geological formations to find, animals and plants to observe, and hands-on learning activities Explains clearly the scientific processes that made North Carolina the state it is today Richly illustrated with photographs, diagrams, and maps; includes an indispensable science glossary

Read more less

Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America's forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America. It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region's past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America's ongoing political struggles. Contributors: Miguel Serra Coelho, Thomas C. Field Jr., Sarah Foss, Michelle Getchell, Eric Gettig, Alan McPherson, Stella Krepp, Eline van Ommen, Eugenia Palieraki, Vanni Pettina, Tobias Rupprecht, David M. K. Sheinin, Christy Thornton, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva, and Odd Arne Westad.

Read more less

The North Carolina Literary Review has included African American writers of North Carolina since the first issue, but the 2019 issue features North Carolina African American Literature, from award-winning contemporary fiction writer Stephanie Powell Watts back to the enslaved poet George Moses Horton. In between, readers will find interviews with novelist Jason Mott, poet Glenis Redmond, and 2018 North Carolina Hall of Fame inductee Randall Kenan; poetry by Redmond, L. Teresa Church, Kevin Dublin, and Amber Flora Thomas; and essays on C. Eric Lincoln, Charles Chesnutt, and Harriet Jacobs. Among the scholars analyzing these writers is Dr. Trudier Harris, formerly the J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, now University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama. Throughout this section, content is complemented by African American art of North Carolina, including works by the late John Biggers and Ivey Hayes and contemporary artists like Monique Luck and Antoine Williams.Rebecca Duncan and Lyn Triplett reintroduce journalist-poet Zoe Kincaid Brockman in the Flashbacks section of the issue, which also includes poetry by James Applewhite and the winning poem of the 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition by Catherine Carter, and an essay on and a recollection of. The North Carolina Miscellany section includes the winning essay in NCLR's 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize competition by Nancy Werking Poling, the winning essay of the North Carolina Humanities Council's 2018 Linda Flowers Literary Award by Jennifer Brown, and the second place Applewhite Prize poem by Sally Thomas. More finalists from NCLR's 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition can be found throughout the issue.This issue is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources.

Read more less

Louisiana had the Longs, Virginia had the Byrds, Georgia had the Talmadges, and North Carolina had the Scotts. In this history of North Carolina's most influential political family, Rob Christensen tells the story of the Scotts and when they dominated Tar Heel politics. Three generations of Scotts—W. Kerr Scott, Robert Scott, and Meg Scott Phipps—held statewide office. Despite stereotypes about rural white southerners, the Scotts led a populist and progressive movement strongly supported by rural North Carolinians—the so-called Branchhead Boys, the rural grassroots voters who lived at the heads of tributaries throughout the heart of North Carolina. Though the Scotts held power in various government positions in North Carolina for generations, they were instrumental in their own downfall. From Kerr Scott's regression into reactionary race politics to Meg Scott Phipps's corruption trial and subsequent prison sentence, the Scott family lost favor in their home state, their influence dimming and their legacy in question.Weaving together interviews from dozens of political luminaries and deep archival research, Christensen offers an engaging and definitive historical account of not only the Scott family's legacy but also how race and populism informed North Carolina politics during the twentieth century.

Read more less

Fought on July 28, 1864, the Battle of Ezra Church was a dramatic engagement during the Civil War's Atlanta Campaign. Confederate forces under John Bell Hood desperately fought to stop William T. Sherman's advancing armies as they tried to cut the last Confederate supply line into the city. Confederates under General Stephen D. Lee nearly overwhelmed the Union right flank, but Federals under General Oliver O. Howard decisively repelled every attack. After five hours of struggle, 5,000 Confederates lay dead and wounded, while only 632 Federals were lost. The result was another major step in Sherman's long effort to take Atlanta.Hess's compelling study is the first book-length account of the fighting at Ezra Church. Detailing Lee's tactical missteps and Howard's vigilant leadership, he challenges many common misconceptions about the battle. Richly narrated and drawn from an array of unpublished manuscripts and firsthand accounts, Hess's work sheds new light on the complexities and significance of this important engagement, both on and off the battlefield.

Read more less

The last days of fighting in the Civil War's eastern theater have been wrapped in mythology since the moment of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. War veterans and generations of historians alike have focused on the seemingly inevitable defeat of the Confederacy after Lee's flight from Petersburg and recalled the generous surrender terms set forth by Grant, thought to facilitate peace and to establish the groundwork for sectional reconciliation. But this volume of essays by leading scholars of the Civil War era offers a fresh and nuanced view of the eastern war's closing chapter. Assessing events from the siege of Petersburg to the immediate aftermath of Lee's surrender, Petersburg to Appomattox blends military, social, cultural, and political history to reassess the ways in which the war ended and examines anew the meanings attached to one of the Civil War's most significant sites, Appomattox. Contributors are Peter S. Carmichael, William W. Bergen, Susannah J. Ural, Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, William C. Davis, Keith Bohannon, Caroline E. Janney, Stephen Cushman, and Elizabeth Varon.

Read more less

The Outer Banks National Scenic Byway received its designation in 2009, an act that stands as a testament to the historical and cultural importance of the communities linked along the North Carolina coast from Whalebone Junction across to Hatteras and Ocracoke Island and down to the small villages of the Core Sound region. This rich heritage guide introduces readers to the places and people that have made the route and the region a national treasure. Welcoming visitors on a journey across sounds and inlets into villages and through two national seashores, Barbara Garrity-Blake and Karen Willis Amspacher share the stories of people who have shaped their lives out of saltwater and sand. The book considers how the Outer Banks residents have stood their ground and maintained a vibrant way of life while adapting to constant change that is fundamental to life where water meets the land.Heavily illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, A Heritage Guide to the Outer Banks Byway will lead readers to the proverbial porch of the Outer Banks locals, extending a warm welcome to visitors while encouraging them to understand what many never see or hear: the stories, feelings, and meanings that offer a cultural dimension to the byway experience and deepen the visitor's understanding of life on the tideline.

Read more less

One of the nation's fastest growing municipalities, Wake County, North Carolina, added more than a quarter million new residents during the first decade of this century, an increase of almost 45 percent. At the same time, partisanship increasingly dominated local politics, including school board races. Against this backdrop, Toby Parcel and Andrew Taylor consider the ways diversity and neighborhood schools have influenced school assignment policies in Wake County, particularly during 2000-2012, when these policies became controversial locally and a topic of national attention. The End of Consensus explores the extraordinary transformation of Wake County during this period, revealing inextricable links between population growth, political ideology, and controversial K–12 education policies.Drawing on media coverage, in-depth interviews with community leaders, and responses from focus groups, Parcel and Taylor's innovative work combines insights from these sources with findings from a survey of 1,700 county residents. Using a broad range of materials and methods, the authors have produced the definitive story of politics and change in public school assignments in Wake County while demonstrating the importance of these dynamics to cities across the country.

Read more less

What if, one step at a time, we could make our gardens and landscapes more eco-friendly? Barbara W. Ellis's colorful, comprehensive guide shows homeowners, gardeners, garden designers, and landscapers how to do just that for the large and beautiful Chesapeake Bay watershed region. This area includes Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and part of West Virginia (translating to portions of USDA Zones 6, 7, and 8). Here, mid-Atlantic gardeners, from beginners to advanced, will find the essential tools for taking steps to make their gardens part of the solution through long-term planning and planting. The guide is built from the ground up around six simple but powerful principles that anyone can use: Reduce lawn Build plant diversity Grow native plants Manage water runoff Welcome wildlife Garden wisely Included are detailed instructions for assessing and designing your particular garden or landscape site; choosing and caring for trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, and flowers; and succeeding with such conditions as shade or poor soil. From rain gardens to woodland gardens, meadow gardens to wildlife gardens, and much more, this indispensable guide features more than 300 color photographs.Published in association with the Adkins Arboretum.

Read more less

This unique hiking guide to the southern Appalachian mountains leads readers to explore the rich forest ecosystems and other natural communities visitors encounter along the trail. Drawing on years of experience guiding forest walks throughout the region, Steph Jeffries and Tom Wentworth invite hikers and nature lovers to see their surroundings in new ways. Readers will learn to decipher clues from the tree canopies, forest floor, and other natural features to appreciate more fully the environmental factors that make the southern Appalachians home to an amazing biodiversity.These thirty popular hikes in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia range from short walks along Blue Ridge Parkway pull-offs to longer day trips in the region's backcountry. Offering spectacular mountain scenery and natural wildflower gardens, these trails are the perfect place to gain a new appreciation for the natural communities of the region.Features include: A summary including distance, difficulty, and GPS coordinates for each hike, a narrative description of each hike, including the unique natural features waiting to be discovered, detailed instructions to keep you on the trail, best seasons to go for wildflower and foliage views, contact information for each area, photos and maps to orient you, an illustrated guide to southern Appalachia's most common trees and shrubs, including tips on identification.

Read more less

This book shows how kids can train their brains for success in any sport. Mental training is just as important as physical training when it comes to success in sport. And like physical fitness, mental toughness is something that can be taught and learned. Yet many young athletes have not learned the psychological skills needed to develop their best game. This book was written specifically for young athletes interested in improving their performance and reaching their potential in sport. ""Bring Your 'A' Game"" introduces key strategies for mental training, such as goal setting, pre-performance routines, confidence building, and imagery. Each of the seventeen chapters focuses on a single mental skill and offers key points and exercises designed to reinforce the concepts. The book encourages athletes to incorporate these mental skills into their daily lives and practice sessions so that they become second nature during competition. Whether used at home by student athletes or assigned by coaches as part of team development, ""Bring Your 'A' Game"" will help young performers develop a plan for success and learn to deal with the challenges of pursuing excellence in sport.

Read more less

The well-loved standard reference for bird-watchers and nature lovers in North Carolina and South Carolina, ""Birds of the Carolinas"" collects information on all avian species known to have occurred in the region since 1900. This thoroughly revised second edition describes more than 460 individual species, including 59 new species that have been recorded since the publication of the first edition in 1980. Updated entries for all species reflect the current status of bird life as well as major changes in taxonomy and nomenclature. Each species account indicates when and where the bird is most likely to be found in the Carolinas, its nesting habits, feeding habits, and descriptive information useful in identifying the species. Generously illustrated with 350 color photographs, this comprehensive guide to regional birds and their behavior will quickly earn a prominent place on the bookshelf of every bird-watcher in the Carolinas.

Read more less

Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past, Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart. Williams begins his story in the colonial era and describes the half-century of bloody warfare as migrants from Europe and their American-born offspring fought and eventually displaced Appalachia's Native American inhabitants. He depicts the evolution of a backwoods farm-and-forest society, its divided and unhappy fate during the Civil War, and the emergence of a new industrial order as railroads, towns, and extractive industries penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains. Finally, he considers Appalachia's fate in the twentieth century, when it became the first American region to suffer widespread deindustrialization, and examines the partial renewal created by federal intervention and a small but significant wave of in-migration. Throughout the book, a wide range of Appalachian voices enlivens the analysis and reminds us of the importance of storytelling in the ways the people of Appalachia define themselves and their region.

Read more less

For nearly twenty-five years, Mildred Council--better known by her nickname, Mama Dip--has nourished thousands of hungry folks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a much-loved community institution that has gained loyal fans and customers from all walks of life, from New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne to former Tar Heel basketball player Michael Jordan. Mama Dip's Kitchen showcases the same down-home, wholesome, everyday Southern cooking for which its namesake restaurant is celebrated. The book features more than 250 recipes for such favorites as old-fashioned chicken pie, country-style pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh corn casserole, poundcake, and banana pudding. Chapters cover breads and breakfast dishes; poultry, fish, and seafood; beef, pork, and lamb; vegetables and salads; and desserts, beverages, and party dishes. The book opens with a charming introductory essay, a savory reflection on a life in cooking that also reveals the story behind Council's nickname. It is both a graceful reminiscence of a country childhood and the inspiring story of a woman determined to make her own way in the larger world. |Mildred Council presents more than 260 recipes from her Chapel Hill restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, one of N.C.'s most popular spots for comfort food, southern style (or downhome Southern food). She also shares the secrets of her famous ""dump"" cooking and offers a graceful essay about her lifelong adventures with food.

Read more less

Like a leisurely stroll along the oak-shaded paths of campus, this vibrant collection of photographs captures the heart and soul of the community that is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From move in day to graduation, two hundred images trace a year in the life of Carolina students, faculty, and staff, at work and at play, in the campus environment that has helped make Chapel Hill the ""southern part of heaven."" A foreword by beloved professor and novelist Doris Betts muses on her own experiences of the University as a compelling place at the literal and figurative heart of the state. The photographs are accompanied by captions that reveal the history and lore of notable campus places, the rituals and traditions of University life, and the wisdom and appreciation of those who have passed through the nation's first state university. Academics, arts, politics, clubs, and athletics - these pages are filled with the memory-making moments of life at Carolina, evoking the timeless present recognizable to Tar Heels young and old. This is everyone's Carolina, to treasure and to share.

Read more less

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated. What is at stake is nothing less than whether Americans can learn to embrace nonracist understandings and practices in relation to food.Sustainable culture—what keeps a community alive and thriving—is essential to Black peoples' fight for access and equity, and food is central to this fight. Starkly exposing the rampant shaming and policing around how Black people eat, Williams-Forson contemplates food's role in cultural transmission, belonging, homemaking, and survival. Black people's relationships to food have historically been connected to extreme forms of control and scarcity—as well as to stunning creativity and ingenuity. In advancing dialogue about eating and race, this book urges us to think and talk about food in new ways in order to improve American society on both personal and structural levels.

Read more less

When most Americans think of surfing, they often envision waves off the coasts of California, Hawai'i, or even New Jersey. What few know is that the South has its own surf culture. To fully explore this unsung surfing world, Steve Estes undertook a journey that stretched more than 2,300 miles, traveling from the coast of Texas to Ocean City, Maryland. Along the way he interviewed and surfed alongside dozens of people—wealthy and poor, men and women, Black and white—all of whom opened up about their lives, how they saw themselves, and what the sport means to them. They also talked about race, class, the environment, and how surfing has shaped their identities.The cast includes a retired Mississippi riverboat captain and alligator hunter who was one of the first to surf the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, a Pensacola sheet-metal worker who ran the China Beach Surf Club while he was stationed in Vietnam, and a Daytona Beach swimsuit model who shot the curl in the 1966 World Surfing Championships before circumnavigating the globe in search of waves and adventure. From these varied and surprising stories emerge a complex, sometimes troubling, but nevertheless beautiful picture of the modern South and its people.

Read more less

Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives, Caribbean New Orleans offers a lively portrait of the city and a probing investigation of the French colonists who established racial slavery there as well as the African slaves who were forced to toil for them. Casting early New Orleans as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than as a North American frontier town, Cecile Vidal reveals the persistent influence of the Antilles, especially Saint-Domingue, which shaped the city's development through the eighteenth century. In so doing, she urges us to rethink our usual divisions of racial systems into mainland and Caribbean categories.Drawing on New Orleans's rich court records as a way to capture the words and actions of its inhabitants, Vidal takes us into the city's streets, market, taverns, church, hospitals, barracks, and households. She explores the challenges that slow economic development, Native American proximity, imperial rivalry, and the urban environment posed to a social order that was predicated on slave labor and racial hierarchy. White domination, Vidal demonstrates, was woven into the fabric of New Orleans from its founding. This comprehensive history of urban slavery locates Louisiana's capital on a spectrum of slave societies that stretched across the Americas and provides a magisterial overview of racial discourses and practices during the formative years of North America's most intriguing city.

Read more less

As early as 1865, survivors of the Civil War were acutely aware that people were purposefully shaping what would be remembered about the war and what would be omitted from the historical record. In Remembering the Civil War, Caroline E. Janney examines how the war generation - men and women, black and white, Unionists and Confederates - crafted and protected their memories of the nation's greatest conflict. Janney maintains that the participants never fully embraced the reconciliation so famously represented in handshakes across stone walls. Instead, both Union and Confederate veterans, and most especially their respective women's organizations, clung tenaciously to their own causes well into the twentieth century. Janney explores the subtle yet important differences between reunion and reconciliation and argues that the Unionist and Emancipationist memories of the war never completely gave way to the story Confederates told. She challenges the idea that white northerners and southerners salved their war wounds through shared ideas about race and shows that debates about slavery often proved to be among the most powerful obstacles to reconciliation.

Read more less

In the financial chaos of the last few decades, increasing wealth inequality has shaken people's expectations about middle-class stability. At the same time, demographers have predicted the "browning" of the nation's middle class—once considered a de facto "white" category—over the next twenty years as the country becomes increasingly racially diverse. In this book, Joseph O. Jewell takes us back to the turn of the twentieth century to show how evidence of middle-class mobility among Black, Mexican American, and Chinese men generated both new anxieties and varieties of backlash among white populations. Blending cultural history and historical sociology, Jewell chronicles the continually evolving narratives that linked whiteness with middle-class mobility and middle-class manhood. In doing so, Jewell addresses a key issue in the historical sociology of race: how racialized groups demarcate, defend, and alter social positions in overlapping hierarchies of race, class, and gender. New racist narratives about non-white men occupying middle-class occupations emerged in cities across the nation at the turn of the century. These stories helped to shore up white supremacy in the face of far-reaching changes to the nation's racialized economic order.

Read more less

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies.William A. Darity Jr.'s new foreword highlights Williams's insights for a new generation of readers, and Colin Palmer's introduction assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Read more less

Journalists began to call the Korean War "the Forgotten War" even before it ended. Without a doubt, the most neglected story of this already-neglected war is that of African Americans who served just two years after Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. Twice Forgotten draws on oral histories of Black Korean War veterans to recover the story of their contributions to the fight, the reality that the military& desegregated in fits and starts, and how veterans' service fits into the long history of the Black freedom struggle. This collection of seventy oral histories, drawn from across the country, features interviews conducted by the author and his colleagues for their 2003 American Radio Works documentary, Korea: The Unfinished War, which examines the conflict as experienced by the approximately 600,000 Black men and women who served. It also includes narratives from other sources, including the Library of Congress's visionary Veterans History Project. In their own voices, soldiers and sailors and flyers tell the story of what it meant, how it felt, and what it cost them to fight for the freedom abroad that was too often denied them at home.

Read more less

This new history of the Christian right does not stop at national or religious boundaries. Benjamin A. Cowan chronicles the advent of a hemispheric religious movement whose current power and influence make headlines and generate no small amount of shock in Brazil and the United States. These two countries, Cowan argues, played host to the principal activists and institutions who collaboratively fashioned the ascendant religious conservatism of the late twentieth century. Cowan not only unearths the deep historical connections between Brazilian and U.S. religious conservatives but also proves just how essential Brazilian thinkers, activists, and institutions were to engendering right-wing political power in the Americas.Cowan shows that both Protestant and Catholic religious warriors began to commune in the 1930s around a passionate aversion to mainstream ecumenicalism and moderate political ideas. Brazilian intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders, and captains of industry worked with partners at home and in the United States to build a united right. Together, activists engaged in a series of reactionary theological discussions. Their transnational, transdenominational platform fostered a sense of common cause and allowed them to develop a series of strategies that pushed once marginal ideas to the center of public discourse, reshaped religious demographics, and effected a rightward shift in politics across two continents.

Read more less

The overall rate of incarceration in the United States has been on the rise since 1970s, skyrocketing during Ronald Reagan's presidency, and recently reaching unprecedented highs. Looking for innovative solutions to the crises produced by gigantic prison populations, Florida's Department of Corrections claims to have found a partial remedy in the form of faith and character-based correctional institutions (FCBIs). While claiming to be open to all religious traditions, FCBIs are almost always run by Protestants situated within the politics of the Christian right. The religious programming is typically run by the incarcerated along with volunteers from outside the prison. Stoddard takes the reader deep inside FCBIs, analyzing the subtle meanings and difficult choices with which the incarcerated, prison administrators, staff, and chaplains grapple every day. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research and historical analysis, Brad Stoddard argues that FCBIs build on and demonstrate the compatibility of conservative Christian politics and neoliberal economics.Even without authoritative data on whether FCBIs are assisting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism rates, similar programs are appearing across the nation-only Iowa has declared them illegal under non-establishment-of-religion statutes. Exposing the intricate connections among incarceration, neoliberal economics, and religious freedom, Stoddard makes a timely contribution to debates about religion's role in American society.

Read more less

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people-families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day-who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. In so doing, Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

Read more less

For over sixty years, American guitarist John Fahey (1939-2001) has been a storied figure, first within the folk and blues revival of the long 1960s, later for fans of alternative music. Mythologizing himself as Blind Joe Death, Fahey crudely parodied white middle-class fascination with African American blues, including his own. In this book, George Henderson mines Fahey's parallel careers as essayist, notorious liner note stylist, musicologist, and fabulist for the first time. These vocations, inspired originally by Cold War educators' injunction to creatively express rather than suppress feelings, took utterly idiosyncratic and prescient turns.Fahey voraciously consumed ideas: in the classroom, the counterculture, the civil rights struggle, the new left; through his study of philosophy, folklore, African American blues; and through his experience with psychoanalysis and southern paternalism. From these, he produced a profoundly and unexpectedly refracted vision of America. To read Fahey is to vicariously experience devastating critical energies and self-soothing uncertainty, passions emerging from a singular location-the place where lone, white rebel sentiment must regard the rebellion of others. Henderson shows the nuance, contradictions, and sometimes brilliance of Fahey's words that, though they were never sung to a tune, accompanied his music.

Read more less

The Civil War brought many forms of upheaval to America, not only in waking hours but also in the dark of night. Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War–era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them.White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: that there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness.

Read more less

Renowned human rights activist Michael Mike' Wilson has borne witness to the profound human costs of poverty, racism, border policing, and the legacies of colonialism. This richly textured and collaboratively written memoir brings Wilson's experiences to life.

Read more less

Looking into the economics of American Protestantism, this work examines how churches have raised and spent money since colonial times and considers what these practices say about both religion and American culture. It contends that paying for good works done in the name of God has proved highly compatible with American ideas of enterprise.

Read more less

Presents the first history of DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which began in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint venture between the police department and the unified school district. By the mid-1990s, it was taught in 75 percent of school districts across the United States.

Read more less

Harry Benjamin (1885–1986), a German-born endocrinologist, was a pivotal figure in the development of transgender medicine. He was physician to transgender pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen, the 1950s "Ex-GI" turned "Blonde Beauty" media sensation, and in turn, she and other collaborators helped to shape Benjamin's influential 1966 book, The Transsexual Phenomenon. Alison Li's much-needed biography of Benjamin chronicles his passion for hormones and his lifelong interest in sexology. Drawing from extensive research in archival documents, secondary sources, and interviews, Li tells the story of Benjamin's early ventures in gerontology and his later work with over a thousand transgender patients. Benjamin's contributions to treatment, education, research, and networking helped to create the institutional foundations of transgender medicine. Moreover, they set the stage for a radical reconsideration of gender identity, challenging us to reflect upon what it is to be male or female and to envision moving beyond these long-held categories.

Read more less

The myth of light and progress has blinded us. In our electric world, we are everywhere surrounded by effortlessly glowing lights that simply exist, as they should, seemingly clear and comforting proof that human genius means the present will always be better than the past, and the future better still. At best, this is half the story. At worst, it is a lie.From whale oil to kerosene, from the colonial period to the end of the U.S. Civil War, modern, industrial lights brought wonderful improvements and incredible wealth to some. But for most workers, free and unfree, human and nonhuman, these lights were catastrophes. This book tells their stories. The surprisingly violent struggle to produce, control, and consume the changing means of illumination over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed slavery, industrial capitalism, and urban families in profound, often hidden ways. Only by taking the lives of whalers and enslaved turpentine makers, match-manufacturing children and coal miners, night-working seamstresses and the streetlamp-lit poor—those American lucifers—as seriously as those of inventors and businessmen can the full significance of the revolution of artificial light be understood.

Read more less

When Hubert Davis was named head men's basketball coach at the University of North Carolina in April 2021, history had already been made, as Davis became the program's first Black head coach. But after two difficult seasons, it was hard to imagine how quickly a new staff, a new playing style, and a new roster blending established players with prominent transfers and talented freshmen would be able to change the story—except within the fabled Smith Center locker room and practice gyms, where photos of the New Orleans Superdome helped players and staff focus on the possible.In words and photos full of behind-the-scenes moments, this book reveals how belief in the program's rich traditions and in one another enabled the 2021-2022 Tar Heels to achieve what at times seemed impossible, writing a thrilling new chapter in the story of Carolina basketball. From Davis's remarkable work to build a new staff and roster to the ups and downs of the conference season to the amazing run through March to the pinnacle of the college game, the story takes fans through one of the most dramatic years in program history.

Read more less

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents. This compelling and sharply argued book addresses economic injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War and offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. This new edition features a new foreword addressing the latest developments on the local, state, and federal level and considering current prospects for a comprehensive reparations program.

Read more less

Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. After spending her formative years between Barbados and Brooklyn, Chisholm's political orientation and power did not follow the standard narratives of the civil rights or feminist establishments. Rather, Chisholm arrived at her Black feminism on her own path, making signature contributions to U.S. politics as an inventor and practitioner of Black feminist power—the vantage point centering Black girls and women in the movement that sought to transform political power into a broadly democratic force.Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building.

Read more less

Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in this critical history of U.S. policy on migration in the Global South, there is actually no such thing as a "climate refugee" under current U.S. law. Most initiatives intended to assist those who must migrate are flawed and ineffective from inception because they are derived from outmoded policies. In a world of climate change, U.S. refugee policy simply does not work.Garcia focuses on Central America and the Caribbean, where natural disasters have repeatedly worsened poverty, inequality, and domestic and international political tensions. She explains that the creation of better U.S. policy for those escaping disasters is severely limited by the 1980 Refugee Act, which continues to be applied almost exclusively for reasons of persecution directly related to politics, race, religion, and identity. Garcia contends that the United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address today's realities. Climate change and natural disasters are here to stay, and much of the human devastation left in their wake is essentially a policy choice.

Read more less

Jerry Barker has long championed North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST), and led its development for many years. In this book, he draws on that experience to take readers on a unique journey along the trail's full route, sharing the rich history and stories that live on each segment.

Read more less

In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded.Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they testified, these individuals charted their movement between West African, indigenous, and colonial cultures; they pronounced their moral and religious values; and they registered their responses to labor, to violence, and, above all, to the intimate romantic and familial bonds they sought to create and protect. Their words--punctuated by the cadences of Creole and rich with metaphor--produced riveting autobiographical narratives as they veered from the questions posed by interrogators.Carefully assessing what we can discover, what we might guess, and what has been lost forever, Sophie White offers both a richly textured account of slavery in French Louisiana and a powerful meditation on the limits and possibilities of the archive.

Read more less

During the Civil War, Union and Confederate politicians, military commanders, everyday soldiers, and civilians claimed their approach to the conflict was civilized, in keeping with centuries of military tradition meant to restrain violence and preserve national honor. One hallmark of civilized warfare was a highly ritualized approach to retaliation. This ritual provided a forum to accuse the enemy of excessive behavior, to negotiate redress according to the laws of war, and to appeal to the judgment of other civilized nations. As the war progressed, Northerners and Southerners feared they were losing their essential identity as civilized, and the attention to retaliation grew more intense. When Black soldiers joined the Union army in campaigns in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, raiding plantations and liberating enslaved people, Confederates argued the war had become a servile insurrection. And when Confederates massacred Black troops after battle, killed white Union foragers after capture, and used prisoners of war as human shields, Federals thought their enemy raised the black flag and embraced savagery.Blending military and cultural history, Lorien Foote's rich and insightful book sheds light on how Americans fought over what it meant to be civilized and who should be extended the protections of a civilized world.

Read more less

Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein racist presumptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how financial, development, migration, and climate adaptation policies reproduce growing inequalities. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theories of racial capitalism, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed the economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From South Asia to the Persian Gulf, Europe, and North America, Ahuja studies how Asian trade, finance, and labor connections have changed the nature of race, borders, warfare, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately, Ahuja argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of longer histories of race, colonialism, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental change.

Read more less

Edna Lewis (1916-2006) wrote some of America's most resonant, lyrical, and significant cookbooks, including the now classic The Taste of Country Cooking. Lewis cooked and wrote as a means to explore her memories of childhood on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, a community first founded by black families freed from slavery. With such observations as "we would gather wild honey from the hollow of oak trees to go with the hot biscuits and pick wild strawberries to go with the heavy cream," she commemorated the seasonal richness of southern food. After living many years in New York City, where she became a chef and a political activist, she returned to the South and continued to write. Her reputation as a trailblazer in the revival of regional cooking and as a progenitor of the farm-to-table movement continues to grow. In this first-ever critical appreciation of Lewis's work, food-world stars gather to reveal their own encounters with Edna Lewis. Together they penetrate the mythology around Lewis and illuminate her legacy for a new generation.The essayists are Annemarie Ahearn, Mashama Bailey, Scott Alves Barton, Patricia E. Clark, Nathalie Dupree, John T. Edge, Megan Elias, John T. Hill (who provides iconic photographs of Lewis), Vivian Howard, Lily Kelting, Francis Lam, Jane Lear, Deborah Madison, Kim Severson, Ruth Lewis Smith, Toni Tipton-Martin, Michael W. Twitty, Alice Waters, Kevin West, Susan Rebecca White, Caroline Randall Williams, and Joe Yonan. Editor Sara B. Franklin provides an illuminating introduction to Lewis, and the volume closes graciously with afterwords by Lewis's sister, Ruth Lewis Smith, and niece, Nina Williams-Mbengue.

Read more less

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies.William A. Darity Jr.'s new foreword highlights Williams's insights for a new generation of readers, and Colin Palmer's introduction assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Read more less