Unpacking 1619 - A Heights Libraries Podcast

Jaquelyn Jahn, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Drexel University, discusses her articles “Neighborhood Proactive Policing and Racial Inequities in Preterm Birth in New Orleans, 2018‒2019” and “Gestational Exposure to Fatal Police Violence and Pregnancy Loss in U.S. Core Based Statistical Areas, 2013-2015.” Professor Jahn discusses how police violence and over-policin...

Kevin C. Dunn, the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Hobart and William Smith Colleges talks about his book, Politics of Origin in Africa: Autochthony Citizenship, and Conflict. Prof. Dunn discusses how concepts of origins and land help define African politics, both consolidating and excluding ethnic groups from State rights […]

Fergus Bordewich discusses his newest book, Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction. Mr. Bordewich explains how the Klu Klux Klan was America’s first terrorist organization intent on counterrevolution after the Civil War. How President Grant mobilized the Federal government to challenge and ultimately dismantle the Klan is the subject of […]

Vida Johnson, professor at law at Georgetown law, discusses her article “White Supremacy and the Bench.” In which she describes how judges maintain and enforce structural racism. Judges benefit from a cultural cache of authority, prestige and as unbiased arbiters of fairness, but they often sustain and amplify racism through jokes, decisions, and rulings that […]

Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, discusses her article, “Exploring Whether and How Black and White Parents Talk with Their Children about Race: M(ai)cro Race Conversations About Black Lives Matter.” which presents the results of an online survey conducted in 2020-2021. Professor Rogers details the ways in which white and Black parents […]

Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens discusses her book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology, which traces the origins of American reproductive health to slave hospitals. As white doctors expanded their practices onto plantations, quickly pregnancy and birth became the focus of their practices. Dr. James Marion Sims with other nineteenth-century gynecologists performed [...

Professor Robin Bernstein discusses her book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison For Profit. Auburn Prison in Upstate New York was designed to be a factory prison, incorporating the area’s major industry into its walls. Through harsh conditions, solitary and silent confinement, and constant violence, the inmates’ lives were desolate ones of […]

Professor Jocelyn Simonson talks about her book, Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Beginning with a close look at the ideological meaning behind calling the prosecution, “The People,” Prof. Simonson points out how the criminal justice systems defines “community.” By looking at several ways activists and volunteers engage in organized […]

Antonia Hylton discusses her book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. Ms. Hylton’s extensive research into Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, a segregated asylum that was both hospital and prison, serves as physical example of racist systems and black resistance. Tracing the history of Crownsville was difficult since so many of the official […]

Professor Stephen Kenny discusses his article, “A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy”: Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South.” Beginning on the shores of West Africa, White doctors began to systematize racialized medicine in the service of slavery. Establishing institutions of idealized models of slave care, the story of slave hospitals became a self-serving lie […]

Professor Sang Kil talks about how “all lives matter” (ALM) has advanced Whiteness in the news. Using critical race theory’s critique of neoliberalism’s use of race-neutral racism, Professor Kil, discusses how “All Lives Matter” works to undermine the civil rights meaning of Black Lives Matter by denying its central critique. Blue Lives Matter, an offshoot […]

Professor Diane Negra discusses her most recent scholarship which investigates Irish identity in the United States. She begins with the election of John F. Kennedy with a sense of hopefulness which progressed through the 1980s and 1990s with an explosion of interest in all things Irish. But beginning in the 2000s, Professor Negra locates a […]

Professor Painter discusses her book, THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE. Prof. Painter begins with discussing just what it means to be “white” and how ideas of whiteness developed using Ancient Greek and Roman sources. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influence is explored before delving into eugenics, anti-Semitism, and Irish Immigration. Nell Irvin Painter is the award-winning author […]

Dr. Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo discusses her article, “How Microaggressions Reinforce and Perpetuate Systemic Racism in the United States.” She defines what microaggressions are and how they support White superiority. Through subtle and slight processes microaggressions protect and reinforce the “othering” of people of color with environmental exclusions, treating people of c...

Professor Leslie Picca discusses her work, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, which examines the racial attitudes and behaviors exhibited by whites in private versus public settings. Prof. Picca explains how simple racial jokes work to maintain dominant racism while offering up an easy out for racists. The creation of these white safe […]

Journalist Laura Meckler of the Washington Post discusses her book, Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity. Beginning with a historical overview of the Cleveland suburb and its uncanny ability to propel itself into the national spotlight, Ms. Meckler discusses how the suburb fought segregation and racial covenants to become one of […]

Professor Marquis Bey discusses their book, BLACK TRANS FEMINISM in which they argue that how we define, label, and identify ourselves can be a way to embrace freedom and the liberated possible. First looking at how we are captured by systems and stereotypes when we see ourselves as defined by our race, gender, or sexuality, […]

Professor Samantha Pinto discusses her book, Infamous Bodies: Early Black Women’s Celebrity and the Afterlives of Rights. Using the idea of “vulnerability” as a touchstone to explain the celebrity of Sally Hemings and Sarah “the Hottentot Venus” Baartman, Prof. Pinto describes how each woman’s agency is complicated by dominant systems of coercion and violence. Sally [...

Professor Reséndez discusses his book, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Prof. Reséndez discusses pre-Colonial enslavement among the native people of North America and the Caribbean. How the Spanish invasion changed native societies, altered slavery, and decimated entire populations. Also discussed is how the abolitionists movement and Civil War Amendments [&...

Professor Waite discusses his book, West of Slavery: the Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire. He explains his thesis that the Southern Slave States had ambitions and plans to extend slavery across the West. Prof. Waite explains how railroads, camels, and the hope for new international markets all played a part in the coming of […]

Professor Nakia Parker discusses her article, “Regarded as an Appendage of His Family: Slavery, Family, and the Law in Indian Territory.” Chattel slavery spread into the Chickasaw Nation, in part, due to the “Civilization Program.” How the Chickasaw legalized ownership and kinship is the focus of our discussion. Nakia D. Parker is an Assistant Professor […]

Professor Barbara Krauthamer discusses her book, Black Slaves, Indian Masters, which examines the role of slavery in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. She explores the tensions brought these Native American tribes by missionaries, trade, and the “civilizing” project of Euro-Americans. The role of slavery as a form of assimilation which Native Americans hoped would enrich […]

Professor Newell discusses her book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery, which explores the enslavement of Indians by the English Colonists in New England. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists’ desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, […]

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph. D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She taught at the University of Massachusetts for over twenty years where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She […]

Professor Erin Thompson discusses her book, “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments.” Prof. Thompson explains the role of Confederate monuments, what they symbolize, and to whom their message is aimed. The design of the “parade stance” figure’s rise to monument dominance provides insight into the submissive posture of white defender wa...