New Books in African American Studies

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New Books in African American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of African America about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

  1. 5 DAYS AGO

    Eve Dunbar, "Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

    Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation (U Minnesota Press, 2024) offers new and insightful readings of African American women's writings in the 1930s-1950s, illustrating how these writers centered Black women's satisfaction as radical resistance to the false and incomplete promise of liberal racial integration. Eve Dunbar examines the writings of Ann Petry, Dorothy West, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks to show how these women explored self-fulfillment over normative and sanctioned models of national belonging. Paying close attention to literary moments of disruption, miscommunication, or confusion rather than ease, assimilation, or mutual understanding around race and gender, Dunbar tracks these writers' dissatisfaction with American race relations. She shows how Petry, West, Childress, and Brooks redeploy the idea of monstrous work to offer potential modalities for registering Black women's capacity to locate satisfaction within the domestic and interpersonal. While racial integration may satisfy the national idea of equality and inclusion, it has not met the long-term needs of Black people's quest for equity. Dunbar responds, demonstrating how these mid-century women offer new blueprints for Black life by creating narrative models for radical satisfaction: Black women's completeness, joy, and happiness outside the bounds of normative racial inclusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    47 min

  2. 5 DAYS AGO

    Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, "The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game" (UNC Press, 2024)

    In The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press, 2024), Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva offer an existential challenge to one of America's favorite pastimes: college football. Drawing on twenty-five in-depth interviews with former players from some of the country's most prominent college football teams, Kalman-Lamb and Silva explore how football is both predicated on a foundation of coercion and suffused with racialized harm and exploitation. Through the stories of those who lived it, the authors examine the ways in which college football must be understood as a site of harm, revealing how players are systematically denied the economic value they produce for universities and offered only a devalued education in return. By illuminating the plantation dynamics that make college football a particularly racialized form of exploitation, the book makes legible the forms of physical sacrifice that are required, the ultimate cost in health and well-being, and the coercion that drives players into the sport and compels them to endure such abusive conditions. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    1h 10m

  3. OCT 22

    Steven T. Katz, "The Holocaust and New World Slavery: A Comparative History, Volume 2" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

    The Holocaust and New World Slavery: Volume 2 (Cambridge UP, 2019) second volume of the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world slavery. Providing a reliable view of the relevant issues, and based on a broad and comprehensive set of data and evidence, Steven T. Katz analyses the fundamental differences between the two systems and re-evaluates our understanding of the Nazi agenda. Among the subjects he examines are: the use of black slaves as workers compared to the Nazi use of Jewish labor; the causes of slave demographic decline and growth in different New World locations; the main features of Jewish life during the Holocaust relative to slave life with regard to such topics as diet, physical punishment, medical care, and the role of religion; the treatment of slave women and children as compared to the treatment of Jewish women and children in the Holocaust.  Katz shows that slave women were valued as workers, as reproducers of future slaves, and as sexual objects, and that slave children were valued as commodities. For these reasons, neither slave women nor children were intentionally murdered. By comparison, Jewish slave women and children were viewed as the ultimate racial enemy and therefore had to be exterminated. These and other findings conclusively demonstrate the uniqueness of the Holocaust compared with other historical instances of slavery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    54 min

  4. OCT 19

    Ashawnta Jackson, "Soul-Folk" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light- the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals- and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours. Soul-Folk (Bloomsbury, 2024) traces the growing imprints of soul-folk and how it made its way from folk tradition to subgenre. Along the way, it explores the musicians, albums, and histories that made the genre what it is. Ashawnta Jackson is a writer based in Brooklyn. She writes mostly about music and culture and has written for Atlas Obscura, Artsy, Crime Reads, Bandcamp, JSTOR Daily, The Whitney Museum, and most recently Vinyl Me Please, where she wrote the liner notes for the reissue of Lee Morgan's Take Twelve. Earlier in her career, she was on the radio at KMHD Jazz Radio in Portland, OR. Ashawnta on Twitter. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025). Bradley on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    1h 11m

  5. OCT 18

    Jennifer Chudy, "Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity (University of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Jennifer Chudy is a book about white people who feel that distress. For decades, political scientists have studied the effects of white racial prejudice, but Dr. Chudy shows that white racial sympathy for Black Americans’ suffering is also a potent force in modern American politics. Grounded in the history of Black-white relations in America, racial sympathy is unique. It is not equivalent to a low level of racial prejudice or sympathy for other marginalized groups. Some White Folks reveals how racial sympathy shapes a significant number of white Americans’ opinions on policy areas ranging from the social welfare state to the criminal justice system. Under certain circumstances, it can also spur action—although effects on political behavior are weaker and less consistent, for reasons Dr. Chudy examines. Drawing on diverse quantitative and qualitative evidence and integrating insights from multiple disciplines, Dr. Chudy explores the origins, importance, and complexity of racial sympathy, as well as the practical implications for political and movement leaders. A companion to the rich literature on prejudice, Some White Folks demonstrates the multifaceted role of race in American politics and public opinion. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    43 min

  6. OCT 16

    Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone"

    This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consciousness and imagination, beyond just political and economic inequalities. Instead, Baldwin called for a fundamental transformation of American society and identity. He critiqued white America, urging white Americans to confront their own behavior and complicity in racist systems. Controversially, Baldwin advocated for Black Americans to approach white countrymen with love, while still insisting on unconditional freedom, seeing this as necessary for true transformation. He ultimately wanted to build a nation that moved beyond racial categorization, focusing instead on individual humanity. Baldwin viewed racism as stemming from a deeper spiritual problem in America, where individuals and the nation lacked a true sense of identity. While he did not offer simple solutions to racism, Baldwin's penetrating analysis and powerful writing exposed the complexities of racism in our country, challenged both white and Black Americans to confront difficult truths, and provided a framework for understanding racism beyond just political reforms. His work continues to influence discussions on race in America today, aiming not to ameliorate racism in a superficial sense, but to push for a profound reckoning with and transformation of American society and identity in relation to race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a powerful novel that explores the complexities of race, sexuality, and identity in America through the life of its protagonist, Leo Proud/hammer. As the story begins, Leo, a successful African-American actor, suffers from a heart attack. As he recovers he reflects on his life and relationships. It is also of interest to note how James Baldwin’s novel relates to Dr. Matin Luther King Jr.’s non-fiction book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Both books are discussed in terms of the major contributions they made to racism in America as well as how they illustrate psychoanalytic mechanism of defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    42 min

  7. OCT 12

    Boris Adjemian, "The Brass Band of the King: Armenians in Ethiopia" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    In 1924, the crown prince and future emperor of Ethiopia, Ras Täfäri, on a visit to Jerusalem, called on forty Armenian orphans who had survived the genocide of 1915-1916 to form his empire's royal brass band. The conductor, who was also Armenian, composed the first official anthem of the Ethiopian state. Drawing on this highly symbolic event, and following the history of the small Armenian community in Ethiopia, in The Brass Band of the King: Armenians in Ethiopia (Bloomsbury, 2024) Boris Adjemian shows how it operated on the margins of political society, hiding in its interstices, preferring intimacy and discreet loyalty to the glitter of open politics. The astonishing role of the Armenians in their host country was embodied in the friendship that the kings and queens of Ethiopia extended to them, a theme that is echoed in the life stories collected from their descendants. Bringing to light the political and cultural importance of a community that has long been ignored and has almost vanished, this study draws on the collective memory of Armenian immigration and the centuries-long history of proximity between the Armenian and Ethiopian Churches. The author argues for a sedentary approach to the diaspora, for a socio-history of this collective rootedness, which dates back to the 19th century and builds on historical representations of otherness from the early modern period up to the colonial era. Highlighting stateless immigrants halfway between the national and the foreign, this history reveals the agency of stateless immigrants and their descendants, their ability to play with identities and undermine assigned belongings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    1h 11m

  8. OCT 8

    Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

    We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could stop people and search them. Taking advantage of a North Carolina law that required the collection of demographic data on those detained by the police during routine traffic stops, Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues analyzed twenty million such stops from 2002-2016. They present the results of this research in Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Join us as we speak with Baumgartner about what they found—and what we can do to reduce the most discriminatory features of the practice. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics and Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford University Press, 2017).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

    36 min
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Interviews with Scholars of African America about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

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