By Libra R. Hilde As Americans grapple with the most recent spate of deaths of Black men and women at the hands of the police, we are once again confronting damaging stereotypes about the Black family and Black masculinity rooted in the legacy of slavery. My book, Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty, explores the masculine hierarchy of slavery that continues to influence current attitudes. In … Continue reading Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century

In October 2020, Sam Watts interviewed Lorena Márquez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California Davis, about her latest book, La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Empowerment in Sacramento (The University of Arizona Press, 2020). SW: Tell us about yourself and how you came to writing this book. LM:  I am the daughter of immigrants from … Continue reading Q&A: Lorena V. Márquez

By Professor Danilo Yanich Even in the age of the Internet, political ads on local television are the most important way candidates in the United States convey their messages. That has been true for a half of a century. Political campaigns in the U.S. are based on money—a lot of it. The estimated cost of the 2020 election is $11 billion, up from $9.8 billion … Continue reading Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money and Local Television News

By Stephen Jakubowicz A comparative approach to historical analysis can reveal interesting points of comparison between historical actors that may at first seem unrelated from one another. However, emerging historical approaches examining the intersection of trade and culture promise to glean further insight into how the two are inextricably connected.[1] An offshoot of similar initiatives in Europe, the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 offered American … Continue reading American Wool Tariffs and the Australian Colonies at the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition

By Dr. Douglas Flowe The recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other African American men and women at the hands of the state in America have brought about a reckoning beyond the scope of anything seen before on the subject. However, in purpose and in spirit, the movement against police violence and the system of racial caste that surrounds and supports it … Continue reading The Crucible of Black Criminality

By Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray In 1838, formerly enslaved African American Moses Roper declared that “you have heard the slaveholder’s side of the story, now it is time for the slaves to speak.” Roper and numerous other Black activists emphasized an international philosophy of Black rights from their unique position on British soil, the basis of which rested on their literary, visual and oratorical testimony. As … Continue reading Advocates of Freedom: African American Activism in the British Isles

By Dr Keri Holt In 1776, Benjamin Franklin designed an emblem to represent the newly declared union of independent states. Printed on the new Continental currency, this emblem depicts thirteen linked rings, each bearing the name of a state, with the resulting chain surrounding the words “We Are One.” Grammatically and visually, this statement is a paradox, asserting that something that is plural can, at … Continue reading Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776-1830

By Dr Michelle C. Neely As 2020 has unfolded, the United States has seemed to walk further and further off an apocalyptic cliff. Police violence and civil rights violations go unchecked, immigrant children remain imprisoned, a pandemic rages, federal environmental protections continue to be dismantled, the Arctic is on fire. It’s tempting to wish that we could somehow turn back the clock and return to … Continue reading Against Sustainability: Reading Nineteenth-Century America in the Age of Climate Crisis