Faculty Publications

A Love Letter (2023)

Carmen Kennedy
Nomadic Press

A LOVE LETTER has the power to speak outside of time (or through time) as did my beloved aunt who left a paper trail that evidenced she kept me in her thoughts. She'd drafted an Advance Directive, and purchased some modest burial insurance, and protected a few memories that might have otherwise been forgotten. A love letter became how she chose to say goodbye and go with grace. So, I wish in many ways to reciprocate her love with this little book--a re-memory--a reflection of where I was when she left this world, and where I am now, and where in the future any one of us might be.

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Steady And Measured: Benner C. Turner, A Black College President in the Jim Crow South (2023)

Travis D. Boyce 
University of South Carolina Press

Steady and Measured chronicles the life, and reassesses the career, of Benner C. Turner, an African American collegiate president at South Carolina State College, a historically black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Although critical of civil rights activism on campus, he championed black education through the pragmatic leadership of his struggling institution.

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Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion (2021)

Wendy M. Thompson (ed.) 
Minnesota Historical Society Press

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police officers, sparking months of unrest at home and around the world. As millions took to the streets to express their outrage and speak out against systemic racism, injustice, and institutionalized violence, the city of Minneapolis and its residents were deeply shaken. For many, George Floyd's murder and the ensuing uprisings shattered the city's reputation for progressive ideals and a high quality of life. For many others, the incident simply caught on camera a representation of the harsh realities and paradoxes that they have been living with for generations. In the words of Jasmine Mitchell, "the ‘Minnesota nice’ comforts and illusionary progressiveness resides upon the ignoring of White racial terrorism and fears of Blackness, brown immigrants, and resistance to White supremacy."

Sparked brings together the perspectives of social scientists, professors, and other academics who work or have worked in Minnesota. The essays present reflections on racial dynamics in the Twin Cities and the intersection of the wonderful and wretched sides of that existence, revealing deep complexities, ingrained inequities, and diverse personal experiences.

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Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering (2020)

Travis D. Boyce (ed.)
University Press of Colorado

Historicizing Fear is a historical interrogation of the use of fear as a tool to vilify and persecute groups and individuals from a global perspective, offering an unflinching look at racism, fearful framing, oppression, and marginalization across human history.The book examines fear and Othering from a historical context, providing a better understanding of how power and oppression is used in the present day.

Contributors ground their work in the theory of Othering—the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other—in relation to historical events, demonstrating that fear of the Other is universal, timeless, and interconnected. Chapters address the music of neo-Nazi white power groups, fear perpetuated through the social construct of black masculinity in a racially hegemonic society, the terror and racial cleansing in early twentieth-century Arkansas, the fear of drug-addicted Vietnam War veterans, the creation of fear by the Tang Dynasty, and more.

Timely, provocative, and rigorously researched, Historicizing Fear shows how the Othering of members of different ethnic groups has been used to propagate fear and social tension, justify state violence, and prevent groups or individuals from gaining equality. Broadening the context of how fear of the Other can be used as a propaganda tool, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, anthropology, political science, popular culture, critical race issues, social justice, and ethnic studies, as well as the general reader concerned with the fearful framing prevalent in politics.

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