Category: Book/Video Reviews

  • Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. By Rachel F. Moran [Bartholet Review] The Journal of Interdisciplinary History Volume 33, Number 2 (Autumn 2002) pages 320–322 DOI: 10.1162/00221950260209039 Elizabeth Bartholet, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law Harvard Law School Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. By Rachel F. Moran (Chicago, University of Chicago…

  • Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity, 1830–1934 University of Minnesota Press September 2015 368 pages 32 b&w photos 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 Paper ISBN 978-0-8166-7303-2 Cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-7302-5 Melissa N. Stein, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies University of Kentucky From the “gay gene” to the “female brain” and African American…

  • All four books under review here are concerned with telling dramatic tales about singular, real lives. But they are also books about race. They are driven by the larger goal of making the individual story stand for more than itself.

  • The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Questions in Brazil, 1870-1930 (review) Bulletin of the History of Medicine Volume 75, Number 1, Spring 2001 pages 152-153 DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2001.0014 J. D. Goodyear, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director, Public Health Studies Program Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland Lilia Moritz Schwarcz. The Spectacle of the…

  • A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs (review) [Cutter] African American Review Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 2015 pages 381-383 Martha J. Cutter, Professor of English and Africana Studies University of Connecticut Hobbs, Allyson, A Chosen Exile: History of Racial Passing in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,…

  • Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first “Free State of Jones” movie Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners 2015-10-11 Vikki Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History Texas State University, San Marcos As we await the release of The Free State of Jones, I thought it might be fun to visit an earlier movie similarly inspired…

  • Groundbreaking New Series – ‘Mister Brau’ – Gives Afro-Brazilians Representations to Cheer Despite Flaws Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora 2015-10-07 Kiratiana Freelon Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo Brazilian television is very white, but most Brazilians aren’t. Brazil’s population is more than 50 percent black, but the television news and entertainment shows…

  • Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi review – serious issues, fairytale narrative The Guardian 2015-10-04 Anthony Cummins Oyeyemi, Helen, Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Press, 2014) Oyeyemi’s fifth novel finds her treating the horrors of racism in 1950s America with gentle, magical style Helen Oyeyemi, a Granta best of young British novelist,…

  • Emmanuelle Saada. Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies The American Historical Review Volume 118, Issue 2 pages 468-470 DOI: 10.1093/ahr/118.2.468 Gary Wilder, Associate Professor of Anthropology The Graduate Center, City University of New York Emmanuelle Saada, Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago:…

  • Identity and Acceptance in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia Uncovered Classics 2015-09-16 Melanie McFarland “Race is a complete illusion, make-believe,” observes a central character in Danzy Senna’s debut novel Caucasia. “It’s a costume. We all wear one.” Or, many. Over the course of our lives, those costumes change as we add and subtract details in reaction to…