Check out these recent books on topics related to African American Studies. Search Discovery and you'll find many more books available in our collection.
African American Arts by (EBSCO eBook) Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S. The essays in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity engage readers in critical conversations by activists, scholars, and artists reflecting on national and transnational legacies of African American activism as an element of artistic practice, particularly as they concern artistic expression and race relations, and the intersections of creative processes with economic, sociological, and psychological inequalities. Scholars from the fields of communication, theater, queer studies, media studies, performance studies, dance, visual arts, and fashion design, to name a few, collectively ask: What are the connections between African American arts, the work of social justice, and creative processes? If we conceive the arts as critical to the legacy of Black activism in the United States, how can we use that construct to inform our understanding of the complicated intersections of African American activism and aesthetics? How might we as scholars and creative thinkers further employ the arts to envision and shape a verdant society? Contributors: Carrie Mae Weems, Carmen Gillespie, Rikki Byrd, Amber Lauren Johnson, Doria E. Charlson, Florencia V. Cornet, Daniel McNeil, Lucy Caplan, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Sammantha McCalla, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Abby Dobson, J. Michael Kinsey, Shondrika Moss-Bouldin, Julie B. Johnson, Sharrell D. Luckett, Jasmine Eileen Coles, Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Rickerby Hinds. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. 
Arrested Justice by Black women in marginalized communities are uniquely at risk of battering, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and incest. This book brings issues of sexuality, class, age, and criminalization into focus right alongside of questions of public policy and gender violence, resulting in a compelling critique, a passionate re-framing of stories, and a call to action for change.
Black Power by (EBSCO eBook) In the 1960s and 70s, the two most important black nationalist organizations, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party, gave voice and agency to the most economically and politically isolated members of black communities outside the South. Though vilified as fringe and extremist, these movements proved to be formidable agents of influence during the civil rights era, ultimately giving birth to the Black Power movement. Drawing on deep archival research and interviews with key participants, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar reconsiders the commingled stories of--and popular reactions to--the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, and mainstream civil rights leaders. Ogbar finds that many African Americans embraced the seemingly contradictory political agenda of desegregation and nationalism. Indeed, black nationalism, he demonstrates, was far more favorably received among African Americans than historians have previously acknowledged. It engendered minority pride and influenced the political, cultural, and religious spheres of mainstream African American life for the decades to come. This updated edition of Ogbar's classic work contains a new preface that describes the book's genesis and links the Black Power movement to the Black Lives Matter movement. A thoroughly updated essay on sources contains a comprehensive review of Black Power-related scholarship. Ultimately, Black Power reveals a black freedom movement in which the ideals of desegregation through nonviolence and black nationalism marched side by side.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
The Black Campus Movement: Black students and the racial reconstitution of higher education, 1965-1972 by This book provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle which disrupted and refashioned institutions in almost every state. It also illuminates the context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history through a history of black higher education and black student activism before 1965.
The Fire This Time by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America," The Fire Next Time," as a jumping off point for this collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
Life Upon These Shores by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest scholarship and including more than 700 images--ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters--Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure.
Lift Every Voice: the NAACP and the making of the civil rights movement by The first major history of America's oldest civil rights organization. When founded in 1909, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was an elite organization of white reformers. By 1918, it had become a mass organization with predominantly black members. Sullivan unearths the little-known early decades of NAACP's activism, telling stories of personal bravery, legal brilliance, and political maneuvering, before moving on to the critical post-war era.
Sister Citizen by Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Sister Citizen explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing.
The Souls of Black Folk (Yale University Press) by "Jonathan Holloway introduces W. E. B. Du Bois' 1903 classic for our time, when visions of a 'post-racial' America clash with the enduring centrality of what Du Bois termed 'the problem of the color-line.' We need Du Bois now more than ever."--Adam Bradley, University of Colorado, Boulder This collection of essays by scholar-activist W. E. B. Du Bois is a masterpiece in the African American canon. Du Bois, arguably the most influential African American leader of the early twentieth century, offers insightful commentary on Black history, racism, and the struggles of Black Americans following emancipation. In his groundbreaking work, the author presciently writes that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," and offers powerful arguments for the absolute necessity of moral, social, political, and economic equality. These essays on the black experience in America range from sociological studies of the African American community to illuminating discourses on religion and "Negro music," and remain essential reading in our so-called "post-racial age." A new introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway explores Du Bois's signature accomplishments while helping readers to better understand his writings in the context of his time as well as ours.650 E Parkway S, Memphis, TN 38117 · (901) 321-3432