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About James Stancil

NBN Episodes hosted by James:

African American Studies October 19, 2017

The Illustrated Slave

Empathy, Graphic Narratives, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1853

Martha J. Cutter

Hosted by James Stancil
Slavery as a system of torture and bondage has fascinated the optical imagination of the transatlantic world for centuries. Scholars have examined various aspects of the visual culture that was …
African American Studies October 16, 2017

Prison Power

How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation

Lisa M. Corrigan

Hosted by James Stancil
In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Prison Power: How Prison Influenced …
African American Studies October 6, 2017

The Port Chicago 50

Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

Steve Sheinkin

Hosted by James Stancil
On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men …
African American Studies October 3, 2017

African Americans Against the Bomb

Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement

Vincent J. Intondi

Hosted by James Stancil
For the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015) tells the compelling story of those black activists who …
African American Studies September 13, 2017

Underground Airlines

A Novel

Ben H. Winters

Hosted by James Stancil
Underground Airlines (Mulholland Books, 2016) is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe …
African American Studies September 11, 2017

Masterless Men

Poor Whites in the Antebellum South

Keri Leigh Merritt

Hosted by James Stancil
Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men: Poor Whites in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017) reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is …
African American Studies September 7, 2017

Katherine Dunham

Dance and the African Diaspora

Joanna Dee Das

Hosted by James Stancil
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2017) …
African American Studies August 28, 2017

Theorizing Race in the Americas

Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos

Juliet Hooker

Hosted by James Stancil
In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere - the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist leader, and orator from the United States, Frederick Douglass - …
African American Studies August 23, 2017

First Martyr of Liberty

Crispus Attucks in American Memory

Mitch Kachun

Hosted by James Stancil
First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores how Crispus Attucks' death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance in …
African American Studies July 25, 2017

The Man-Not

Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood

Tommy J. Curry

Hosted by James Stancil
The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning field of Black Male Studies. The author posits …
African American Studies July 20, 2017

Congo Love Song

African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State

Ira Dworkin

Hosted by James Stancil
In his 1903 hit "Congo Love Song," James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song's title may appear consistent with that …
African American Studies July 13, 2017

Blue Texas

The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era

Max Krochmal

Hosted by James Stancil
Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is about the "other" Texas, not the state known for …
Art June 23, 2017

Through Darkness to Light

Photographs Along the Underground Railroad

Jeanine Michna-Bales

Hosted by James Stancil
When the Sun comes back And the first quail calls Follow the Drinkin' Gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the …
African American Studies June 14, 2017

Mainstreaming Black Power

Tom Adam Davies

Hosted by James Stancil
What is Black Power? Does it still exist in the so-called post-racial 21st Century? How does Black Power relate to similar movements, like Black Lives Matter? There as so many …
African American Studies June 8, 2017

Fighting for Uncle Sam

Blacks in the Frontier Army

John P. Langellier

Hosted by James Stancil
From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation's defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) breathes …
African American Studies May 27, 2017

A Pure Solar World

Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism

Paul Youngquist

Hosted by James Stancil
The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting …
African American Studies May 26, 2017

Fugitive Science

Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture

Britt Rusert

Hosted by James Stancil
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (New York University Press, 2017), uncovers the dynamic …
African American Studies May 19, 2017

Making Gullah

A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination

Melissa L. Cooper

Hosted by James Stancil
Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history that upends a long tradition of scrutinizing the …
African American Studies May 16, 2017

Connecting the Wire

Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore

Stanley Corkin

Hosted by James Stancil
Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling …
African American Studies April 26, 2017

In the Name of the Mother

Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen

Samuele Pardini

Hosted by James Stancil
In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen (Dartmouth, 2017) emphasizes the racial "in-betweenness" of Italian Americans rearticulated as …
African American Studies April 18, 2017

Devil's Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies

How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll

James A. Cosby

Hosted by James Stancil
Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song …
African American Studies April 12, 2017

Remixing Reggaeton

The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico

Petra Rivera-Rideau

Hosted by James Stancil
Puerto Rico is often depicted as a "racial democracy" in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race …
African American Studies April 5, 2017

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh

The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

Daina Ramey Berry

Hosted by James Stancil
A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation …
African American Studies March 29, 2017

The World of Shaft

A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films and Television Series

Steve Aldous

Hosted by James Stancil
Who's the black private dick That's a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) Ya damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck For his brother man …