American Obscurantism: History and the Visual in U.S. Literature and Film
By Peter Lurie (NHC Fellow, 2009–10)
Race
Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture
By Lee D. Baker (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) In the late nineteenth century, if ethnologists in the United States recognized African American culture, they often perceived it as something to be overcome and left behind. At the same time, they were committed to salvaging “disappearing” Native American culture by curating objects, narrating practices, and recording languages. … Continued
Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture
By Hortense J. Spillers (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Black, White, and in Color offers a long-awaited collection of major essays by Hortense Spillers, one of the most influential and inspiring black critics of the past twenty years. Spanning her work from the early 1980s, in which she pioneered a broadly poststructuralist approach to African American literature, and … Continued
Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories
By Ásta (NHC Fellow, 2016–17) We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? Ásta approaches … Continued
From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994
By Dan T. Carter (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) In this penetrating survey of the last three decades, Dan T. Carter examines race as an issue in presidential politics. Drawing on his broad knowledge of recent political history, he traces the “counterrevolutionary” response to the civil rights movement since Wallace’s emergence on the national scene in 1963, … Continued
James Baldwin’s America and Ours Today
Dr. Glaude looks at Baldwin’s world and sees our own moment reflected back. Like Baldwin, Glaude argues, we live in the after times—in Baldwin’s case of the Civil Rights movement, and in our times of the Obama presidency and the promise of Black Lives Matter. In both cases, America responded to a challenge to the existing … Continued
Race, Nation, and Genocide: Terror in the Twentieth-Century (2012)
The study of 20th-century history provides us with an enigmatic contrast. Most casual American observers view the last century as a time of great technological and social progress. And doubtless, technological advances in medicine and transportation, social movements such as decolonization, civil rights and the women’s movement, and communications revolutions resulting in globalization improved human … Continued
Race, Nation, and Genocide: Terror in the Twentieth-Century (2015)
The study of 20th-century history provides us with an enigmatic contrast. Most casual American observers view the last century as a time of great technological and social progress. And doubtless, technological advances in medicine and transportation, social movements such as decolonization, civil rights and the women’s movement, and communications revolutions resulting in globalization improved human … Continued
The 19th Amendment at 100: A Centennial Reassessment, Focusing on Sex, Race, and Memory
The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has … Continued
The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination in Youth Literature, Media, and Culture
Humans read and listen to stories not only to be informed but also as a way to enter worlds that are not like our own. A sense of the infinite possibilities inherent in fairy tales, fantasy, science fiction, comics, and graphic novels draws children, teens, and adults from all backgrounds to speculative fiction–also known as … Continued