by Brandon Render Prior to the publication of “The Case for Reparations” in 2013, Ta-Nehisi Coates was a little-known blogger turned Senior Editor of The Atlantic magazine. Today, Coates has emerged as not only the top contemporary black intellectual, but a leading American thinker – regardless of race – with stinging critiques of President Barack […]
The Works of Steven Hahn
By Jacqueline Jones This week on February 15 and 16, the Littlefield Lecture Series in the Department of History presents Dr. Steven Hahn, Pulitzer Prize Winning Historian and Professor of History at New York University. (Details on the lectures below). Here, Prof. Jacqueline Jones, Chair of The Department of History and regular contributor to Not […]
Before Hamilton
By Peter Kunze In a recent interview with Fusion about how Hamilton (2015) “revolutionized” Broadway for performers of color, the Tony Award-winning lead, Leslie Odom, Jr., recalled, “I saw a reading of Hamilton at Vassar. There’s four men of color on stage, singing a song about friendship and brotherhood, and it undid me. I had never seen […]
Beyoncé as Historian: Black Power at the DPLA
Edward Shore revisits the controversy surround Beyoncé’s Super Bowl 50 halftime show that paid tribute to #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Panthers. He uses Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) primary source sets to contextualize Beyoncé’s message of protest and to explore the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Black Power Movement.
Remembering Willie “El Diablo” Wells and Baseball’s Negro Leagues
Edward Shore pays tribute to Austinite and Negro Leagues legend Willie “El Diablo” Wells and reflects on the enduring legacies of racism in the National Pastime.
Ordinary Yet Infamous: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso
This case, this story, and the black woman at the heart of it forces us to move past binary notions of race, gender, and sexuality but also, too, it resists snap judgments about who exactly is good or evil and calls into question the validity of standard notions of justice.