In the News!

Lena Hill featured in UI's The Big Story, where she discusses a dynamic event that defines the strengths of the public humanities:


"Lena Hill, who is an assistant professor of English and African-American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has given rise to “Iowa and Invisible Man: Making Blackness Visible,” a multimedia and multidisciplinary project that will examine the black experience at the University of Iowa and culminate in a staged reading of a theatrical version of Ralph Ellison’s novel on Saturday, Dec. 3, in Shambaugh Auditorium at the UI Main Library. The reading is in preparation for the first-ever stage adaptation of Invisible Man, set to open in Chicago in early 2012.




How did Hill get in the middle of all of that?


Her scholarly work, “The Visual Art of Invisible Man: Ellison’s Portrait of Blackness,” was published in American Literature, which was read by New York City producer and director Chris McElroen as he was researching Invisible Man, which he hopes to turn into a stage play."


Go here for the full story.




Deborah Whaley's article and book on civil rights, Catwoman, and sequential art featured in bigthink (feature piece written by Bob Duggan on November 3, 2011)
"As the assault of comic book superhero-featuring movies over the past few years attests, the men and women in tights serve today as the closest thing American culture has to a mythology. Whenever someone can add a layer of understanding to that mythology, I can’t help but try to incorporate it into my own understanding of superherodom. When I read Deborah Elizabeth Whaley’s “Black cat got your tongue?: Catwoman, blackness, and the alchemy of postracialism,” in the latest issue of Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, I finally understood the special quality that Eartha Kitt brought to the Catwoman character in the late 1960s Batman television series.” Read more here: http://bigthink.com/ideas/40944






Click Above for Turner Interview


Richard Turner was interviewed on  the Night Waves program on “Islam, Malcolm X, and the African American Experience” on BBC Radio 3, London, U.K. On May 9, 2011. Professor Turner has published extensively on the topic (most recently the book chapter, “Malcolm X and Youth Culture” in Robert Terrill, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 101-112), and he teaches a course on the topic titled, “Malcolm X, King, and Human Rights.”  His BBC interview also focused on the varied responses to Mannie Marable's book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking, 2011). Listen above or click here






Miriam Thaggert was recently interviewed for her new book, Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance for New Books in African American Studies. The interviewer, Vershawn Young, writes that Images of Black Modernism "is an exceptional contribution to the discussion of both modernism and the the period of intense African American artistic production known as the Harlem Renaissance. Black Modernism is particularly invaluable because it explores the techniques, devices, and politics of blackness as both a cultural and literary concept, even as it examines modernism in the same way. It is a well-written and meticulously researched study." You may listen to the podcast here.



Department of English and African American Studies Program Professor Wins Teaching and Mentor Award! 


Congratulations to Professor Lena Hill, who has been named the recipient of 2011's James N. Murray Faculty Award. The Murray Award honors an untenured faculty member, who has demonstrated outstanding rapport with students and who creates an exemplary classroom atmosphere. Professor Hill teaches an impressive list of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels that range from American visual culture, drama, and poetry to African American literary authors:

  • Foundations in African American Studies
  • African American Literature before 1900
  • Literature and Art: Writing Against Visual Stereotypes
  • Topics in American Literature II: American Portraits
  • American Poetry: African American Verse
  • American Drama before 1900
  • Selected African American Authors: Zora Neale Hurston
  • Selected African American Authors: Ralph Ellison & Richard Wright
  • Studies in African American Literature: Visualizing Blackness
*To find out more about Professor Hill, visit her faculty profile here.



Department of Rhetoric and African American Studies Program Professor Publishes Groundbreaking Anthology on Black Performance and the Cultural Politics of Class
In From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances, editors Vershawn Ashanti Young and Bridget Harris Tsemo collect a diverse assortment of pieces that examine the generational shift in the perception of the black middle class, from the serious moniker of “bourgeois” to the more playful, sardonic “boojie.” Including such senior cultural workers as Amiri Baraka and Houston Baker, as well as younger scholars like Damion Waymer and Candice Jenkins, this significant collection contains essays, poems, visual art, and short stories that examine the complex web of representations that define the contemporary black middle class. 





Communication Studies and African American Studies Program Professor Receives Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Spring 2012 Cmiel Research Semester Grant
Topic: The Dis-Integration of Black America? Post-Civil Rights African American Culture
Professor Tim Havens will convene the Cmiel Research Semester for Spring 2012. The seminar will explore analyses of institutions, cultural production, representation, politics, and community in regards to the significance of post-Civil Rights African American culture, both within and beyond the United States. Havens and seminar participants will gather weekly at the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies during the Spring 2012 Semester. Participants will pursue individual projects while also exchanging ideas on approaches to the study of post-Civil Rights African American culture. The goal is to advance important scholarly and creative work as participants strengthen their projects through the exchange of ideas, resources, and work-in-progress.



Department of History and African American Studies Program Professor Receives Fulbright Scholar Award
Congratulations to Professor Kevin Mumford, who has been named a Fullbright Scholar for 2011-2012.  To find out more about Professor Mumford and his research, go here.







Department of Religion and African American Studies Program Professor Course on New Orleans Featured in Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Professor Richard Turner, who teaches in the department of religion and program in African American studies at the University of Iowa, is featured in the latest issue of Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Turner teaches a freshman seminar course called “Black New Orleans Before and After Hurricane Katrina.” In the course, students explore the history and rich cultural traditions of the city and see evidence of how blacks have been marginalized over the centuries in New Orleans. The story appears on Page 7 of the April 15 digital edition of the magazine, available at http://diverseeducation.com/. To find out more about Professor Turner and his research, go here.

Department of American Studies and African American Studies Program Professor Delivers Keynote for Women's History Month
The Iowa Women’s Archives kicked off Women’s History Month 2011 with a keynote lecture on Wednesday, March 2nd, by Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, Assistant Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. Whaley is the author of Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororitieswhich looks at the role of the Black sorority in women’s everyday lives, public life, and politics. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, oral history, and interpretive readings of popular culture and sorority rituals, the study includes sorority members’ stories of community organizing and of cultural practices and rituals such as step dancing, pledging, and hazing. Her Women's History Month keynote was titled “We Strive and We Do: Black Sorority Activism and the Black Public Sphere.”  To find out more about Professor Whaley, visit her website here.



Leslie Schwalm's book Emancipation's Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest, featured in the New Books in History Podcast (Listen Here)

From the interviewer Marshall Poe: "You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War. But have you heard of “Northern Reconstruction?” Probably not. I hadn’t either until I read Leslie Schwalm’s superb new book Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). We tend to think of the Civil War as a Northern fight against Southern slavery. It was that to some extent. But, in our rush to congratulate ourselves on liberating those in Southern bondage, we tend to overlook the fact that blacks living in the North were treated none too well by the majority white residents. Being anti-slavery didn’t mean being pro-African American. In this meticulously researched book, Leslie traces the history of the African American migration to the Upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota) during and after the war. It’s not a very pretty picture. The whites in the area were not at all receptive to the idea that emancipated slaves would live among them. White Midwesterners had deprived African Americans of their civil rights before the war and they had every intention of doing the same after the war. They were hostile to the emancipated migrants and did everything they could to see that they were kept “in their place.” That’s why even the North had to be “reconstructed.” Read this book. It will change what you think, and that can’t be said for every history."