Black-Centered and Antiracist Scholarship by JMU Faculty and Staff

Note: the citations listed below represent the thinnest slice of the work being done by the scholars of JMU. Please visit the faculty webpage of the African, African American, and Diaspora Studies program to learn more about their powerful and essential work.

Ms. Lauren Alleyne. Difficult Fruit (2014) and Honeyfish (2018).

Dr. Emeka Anaza. with Jacqueline McDowell, “An Exploration of Students’ Conceptualization of Affirmative Action in Sport Management Careers.” International Journal of Sport Management, no. 1, 2016, p. 102.

Dr. Bethany Bryson. with Alexander K. Davis, "Conquering Stereotypes in Research on Race and Gender," Sociological Forum, Vol. 25, No. 1, March 2010

Dr. Taimi Castle.

• “Cops and the Klan: Police Disavowal of Risk and Minimization of Threat from the Far Right.” Crit Crim. (2020)
• With Lars Kristiansen and Lantz Shifflett. “White Racial Activism and Paper Terrorism: A Case Study in Far-Right Propaganda.” Deviant Behavior, 41(2): 252-267. (2020)

Ms. Erica Cavanagh.

• “Excision,” Entropy Magazine (2019)
• “Possible Us,” The Wilson Quarterly Online, (2012)
• More essays can be found at the author's website.

Dr. Gianluca De Fazio. Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia, "an ongoing research project examining one of the darkest, yet almost forgotten, pages of American history: the lynching of thousands of people in the US South."

Dr. Dolores Flamiano. Women, Workers, and Race in Life magazine: Hansel Mieth's Reform Photojournalism, 1934-1955 (2016)

Dr. Brian Flota. “Challenging ‘Stereotypes and Fixity’: African American Comic Books in the Academic Archive.” Comics & Critical Librarianship: Reframing the Narrative in Academic Libraries, edited by Olivia Piepmeyer and Stephanie Grimm, Library Juice, 2019.

Dr. Joanne Gabbin. The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry (1999)

Dr. Mollie Godfrey. Neo-Passing: Performing Identity after Jim Crow. Co-editor, with Vershawn Ashanti Young. University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Dr. Oris Griffin. with Alan M. Schwitzer and Julie R. Ancis, "Social Adjustment Experiences of African American College Students." Journal of Counseling & Development; Spring 99, Vol. 77 Issue 2, p189-197.

Dr. Brooks Hefner. “Signifying Genre: George S. Schuyler and the Vagaries of Black Pulp,” Modernism/modernity 26.3 (September 2019): 483-504.

Dr. Beth Hinderliter. More than the Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Black Lives Matter Movement. Co-edited with Steve Peraza. (Currently under review for publication).

Mr. McKinley Melton. "What God Hath Put Together: Hurston, Black Queer Love, and the Act of Creation," Langston Hughes Review 26.1 (2020).

Dr. Brillian Besi Muhonja. Turn Down the Volume on Silence, forthcoming in 2020 from Africa Resource Press.

Dr. Margaret Mulrooney. Race, Place, and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina. (2018)

Dr. Bethany Nowviskie. “Speculative Collections and the Emancipatory Library,” in The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites. eds. Hannah Lewi et al. Routledge, 2019.

Dr. John Ott. “Battle Station MoMA: Jacob Lawrence and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces and the Art World,” American Art 29:3 (Fall 2015): 58–89.

Dr. Steven Reich. A Working People : A History of African American Workers Since Emancipation. Rowman and Littlefield, 2013

Dr. Sofia Samatar. "Skin Feeling," The New Inquiry, 25 Sept 2015.

Dr. Mary Thompson. “Precarity and Disasters in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones: A Reproductive Justice Reading” in The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion, and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism. 37-61. (2019)

Dr. William Van Norman. Shade-Grown Slavery: The Lives of Slaves on Coffee Plantations in Cuba. Vanderbilt UP, 2013

Dr. Case Watkins. "Landscapes and Resistance in the African Diaspora: Five Centuries of Palm Oil on Bahia's Dendê Coast." Journal of Rural Studies. 61: 137-154. (2018)

Dr. Kristin Wylie.

• with Ernest B. McGowen. "Racialized Differences in Perceptions of and Emotional Responses to Police Killings of Unarmed African Americans," Politics, Groups, and Identities (2020).
• with Ismail K. White, Tasha S. Philpot, and Ernest McGowen. "Feeling the Pain of My People: Hurricane Katrina, Racial Inequality, and the Psyche of Black America." Journal of Black Studies 37(4): 2007. 523-538.

Ms. Susan Zurbrigg. Changing the Narrative (2019)

Programs Supporting Black Studies and Holding Black Spaces on Campus

JMU Libraries Resources

• Antiracism in Action. Visit the amazing curated set of "e-resources (books, video, articles, etc.) created by JMU Libraries’ Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to help you educate yourself on the past to understand the present, to amplify and listen to the voices of those affected by racism, and to confront the current and ongoing injustices in the United States." Check it out here.
• Understanding Black Lives Matter. A 2016 display created by Yasmeen Shorish and Michael Mungin that "covers a diverse range of interrelated topics" related to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Visit the display here.
• Still I Rise: Black Lives Matter. A followup to the 2016 display, this 2017 display selected by Liz Chenevey aims to "highlight the black experience in art and literature and American society as a whole." Take a look at the display here.

JMU's minor in African, African American, and Diaspora Studies. The AAAD program engages cross disciplinary approaches to understand and to encounter Africa and the African Diaspora in a global context. More information here.

The Furious Flower Poetry Center. The nation’s first academic center for Black poetry, "the Furious Flower Poetry Center is committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters, as well as in the whole range of educational curricula." Find out more about this vibrant and essential resource here, or visit the archive, created and curated by JMU faculty and students.

The Center for Multicultural Student Services "provides educational and celebratory programs and services that support an inclusive campus community in which members value diversity within themselves and others." Learn more about their programming and the student organizations they support here.