Month: December 2015

  • Hairy Paws and Bald Heads: Anxiety and Authority in W. D. Howells’ An Imperative Duty American Literary Realism Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2016 pages 95-111 James Weaver, Assistant Professor of English Denison University, Granville, Ohio Intensely concerned with the cultural and personal implications of miscegenation and its resultant social upheaval, W. D. Howells’ An…

  • Racial Fictions and the Cultural Work of Genre in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars American Literary Realism Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2016 pages 128-146 Melissa Asher Rauterkus, Assistant Professor of English University of Alabama, Birmingham I intend to record my impressions of men and things, and such incidents or conversations which…

  • How Green Was My Surname; Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America The New York Times 2003-03-17 S. Lee Jamison Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Shaquille O’Neal! So many African-Americans have Irish-sounding last names—Eddie Murphy, Isaac Hayes, Mariah Carey, Dizzy Gillespie, Toni Morrison, H. Carl McCall—that you would think that the long story…

  • Why It Was Easy for Rachel Dolezal to Pass as Black Pacific Standard 2015-06-15 Lisa Wade, Associate Professor of Sociology Occidental College, Los Angeles, California Race is more social than biological. Source: (1)ne Drop Project Earlier this year a CBS commentator in a panel with Jay Smooth embarrassingly revealed that she thought he was white…

  • A More Perfect Union: Black Freedoms, White Houses Public Culture Volume 28, Number 1, January 2016 pages 63-87 DOI: 10.1215/08992363-3325016 Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois President Barack Obama signifies both the power of the institutional presidency and the legacy of black freedom struggles. His post in…

  • Taken Identity The UC Santa Barbara Current Santa Barbara, California 2015-12-21 Jim Logan A new book by a UC Santa Barbara historian traces the bright and fuzzy lines of race in America The United States’ long record on race is, shall we say, checkered. Even in a time when an African-American sits in the White…

  • Allyson Hobbs. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. [Smith-Pryor Review] The American Historical Review Volume 120, Issue 5, December 2015 pages 1903-1904 DOI: 10.1093/ahr/120.5.1903 Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Associate Professor of History Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Allyson Hobbs. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge,…

  • Crossing Gender, Fantasizing Bodies Transgender Studies Quarterly Volume 2, Number 4, November 2015 pages 717-719 DOI: 10.1215/23289252-3151664 Michael Davidson, Professor Emeritus of American Literature; Distinguished Professor University of California, San Diego Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race. Ellen Samuels. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 263 pp. Ellen Samuels’ Fantasies of Identification is about…

  • Passing for what you are not—whether it is mulattos passing as white, Jews passing as Christian, or drag queens passing as women–can be a method of protection or self-defense. But it can also be a uniquely pleasurable experience, one that trades on the erotics of secrecy and revelation. It is precisely passing’s radical playfulness, the…

  • Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race New York University Press April 2014 273 pages 12 halftones Cloth ISBN: 9781479812981 Paper ISBN: 9781479859498 Ellen Samuels, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and English University of Wisconsin, Madison In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white,…