New Books Network
African American Studies
Malcolm X and Black Nationalism November 30, 2020

Malcolm X

The FBI File

Clayborne Carson

Hosted by Kirk Meighoo
This is a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. We delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting the …

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Political Science November 30, 2020

The Black Cabinet

The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt

Jill Watts

Hosted by Susan Liebell
When did Black Americans move from stalwart Lincoln Republicans to dedicated New Deal Democrats? How did a group of self-organized Black economists, lawyers, sociologists, and journalists call out inequality in …
African American Studies November 20, 2020

Bind Us Apart

How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation

Nicholas Guyatt

Hosted by Adam McNeil
Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? Racism is the usual answer. Yet Nicholas Guyatt argues …
Intellectual History November 19, 2020

No Future in This Country

The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner

Andre E. Johnson

Hosted by Hettie V. Williams
No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner by Andre E. Johnson, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at the University of Memphis …
African American Studies November 17, 2020

Malcolm X at Oxford Union

Racial Politics in a Global Era

Saladin Ambar

Hosted by Kirk Meighoo
In 1964, Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic of debate that evening was the infamous phrase from Barry Goldwater's 196 …
Critical Theory November 16, 2020

A Piece of the Action

Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood

Eithne Quinn

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
What is the history of equal rights in Hollywood? In A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood (Columbia UP, 2019), Eithne Quinn, a senior lecturer …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 12, 2020

College Presidents and the Struggle for Integration

A Conversation with Eddie R. Cole

Eddie R. Cole

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Some of America's most pressing civil rights issues--desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech--have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known …
Literary Studies November 12, 2020

Writing Across the Color Line

U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920

Lucas A. Dietrich

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
In Writing Across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), Lucas A. Dietrich investigates how ethnic literatures took shape …
Literary Studies November 10, 2020

The Black Radical Tragic

Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution

Jeremy Matthew Glick

Hosted by Lee Pierce
What if the Haitian Revolution, perhaps the only “successful” Black revolution in history, weren’t over? On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Dr. Jeremy …
Literary Studies November 9, 2020

That Middle World

Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing

Julia S. Charles

Hosted by James West
In this chronologically and thematically ambitious study of racial passing literature, Julia Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves—a place she terms that middle world. Charles, an …
African American Studies November 6, 2020

Between Fitness and Death

Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean

Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy

Hosted by Adam McNeil
Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-existing European ideas about monstrosity and deformity …
African American Studies November 5, 2020

Bound In Wedlock

Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century

Tera W. Hunter

Hosted by Jerrad Pacatte
Americans have long viewed marriage between a white man and a white woman as a sacred union. But marriages between African Americans have seldom been treated with the same reverence …
African American Studies November 5, 2020

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery

Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas

John Garrison Marks

Hosted by Adam McNeil
Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged …
Political Science November 5, 2020

From Slave Cabins to the White House

Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture

Koritha Williams

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Koritha Mitchell, Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, has written a complex, interdisciplinary, and important analysis focusing on black women as the lens to explore the intersection …
African American Studies November 4, 2020

Black in Place

The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City

Brandi Thompson Summers

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
While Washington, D.C., is still often referred to as “Chocolate City,” it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents this …
Politics November 4, 2020

Down Along with That Devil’s Bones

A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy

Connor Towne O’Neill

Hosted by Christina Gessler
In Down Along with That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy (Algonquin Books, 2020), journalist Connor Towne O’Neill takes a deep dive into …
African American Studies November 3, 2020

Contingent Kinship

The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States

Kathryn A. Mariner

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States (University of California Press, 2019) offers an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner …
Literary Studies November 3, 2020

Becoming Human

Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

Zakkiyah Imam Jackson

Hosted by Lee Pierce
In a world where black(ened) flesh, particularly feminine flesh, is considered the ontological zero of humanness, what interventions and complications are available from art and speculative fiction of the African …
African American Studies October 30, 2020

The Campus Color Line

College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom

Eddie Cole

Hosted by Matthew Johnson
Some of America’s most pressing civil rights issues—desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech—have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known …
Music October 30, 2020

The Meaning of Soul

Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s

Emily J. Lordi

Hosted by Kristen Turner
Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020) …