The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), one of the most innovative Africana programs in the country, serves as the structural home for African American Studies at the University of Michigan. Bridging Humanities and Social Sciences, Africa and its diasporas, CAAS offers graduate and undergraduate curricula, as well as a graduate certificate program (http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/caas/).
The Program in American Culture shares many joint faculty members with CAAS, but we also have a number of faculty working in African American studies who have other affiliations. In close dialogue with American Studies, cultural studies, and comparative ethnic studies, the Program's African American studies faculty cluster explores a diverse array of interests: transatlantic circuits of culture, jazz and black musical aesthetics, African American literary production, gender, sexuality and power, black-Indian relations, Asian-African American relations, urban race politics, humor and other modes of black cultural production, among others. African American studies is home to award-winning teachers, innovative graduate and undergraduate course offerings, and exceptional scholarship that never fails to push the boundaries.
Our Faculty and their Areas of Interest
Paul Anderson
Assistant Professor, American Culture and Center for African and Afroamerican Studies
Areas of Interest: 20th-century U.S. intellectual and cultural history; African American cultural history; jazz and popular music studies; Harlem Renaissance; modernism and critical theory.
paanders@umich.edu
Matthew Briones
Assistant Professor/Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow
Areas of Interest: Comparative Ethnic Studies; APIA history and literature; African American Studies; 20th century fiction; history of American education.
mbrio@umich.edu
Lori Brooks
Assistant Professor, American Culture and Center for African and Afroamerican Studies
Areas of Interest: African American arts and popular culture.
llbrooks@umich.edu
James Cook
Associate Professor, American Culture and History
Areas of Interest: African-American Popular/Mass Culture; circumatlantic cultural exchanges and commerce; inter-racialism.
jwcook@umich.edu
Matthew Countryman
Associate Professor, American Culture and History
Areas of Interest: African-American social movements; 20th century United States history; race, postwar liberalism, and the American left.
mcountry@umich.edu
Sandra Gunning
Associate Professor, American Culture, English and Center for African and Afroamerican Studies
Areas of Interest: 19th and 20th century American literature; Afro-American literature; American women writers; travel writing.
sgunning@umich.edu
Scott Kurashige
Assistant Professor, American Culture/Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies and History
Areas of Interest: Asian/Pacific American history; U.S. urban history, Los Angeles and Detroit; comparative race and ethnicity.
kurashig@umich.edu
Tiya Miles
Assistant Professor, American Culture/Native American Studies and Center for African and Afroamerican Studies
Areas of Interest: African American and Native American interrelated and comparative histories, especially 19th century; African American women's history and literature; women of color history, literature, and feminist thought.
tiya@umich.edu
Hannah Rosen
Assistant Professor, American Culture and Women's Studies
Areas of Interest: The nexus of race and gender in 19th century U.S. social and cultural history, with an emphasis on the South; feminist theory; comparative slavery and emancipation; histories of violence; discourses of citizenship.
hrosen@umich.edu
Penny Von Eschen
Associate Professor, American Culture and History
Areas of Interest: transnational cultural and political dynamics; race, gender, and empire: the political culture of United States imperialism.
pmve@umich.edu
Magdalena Zaborowska
Associate Professor, American Culture and Center for African and Afroamerican Studies
Areas of Interest: 20th century immigrant literatures, African American literature; East European immigrant women writers; race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and (trans)national/-Atlantic identity in the novel; American identity and the city; architecture, erotics, urban and social space.
mzaborow@umich.edu
Courses
African American Culture WWII to 1960s
African Americans & the Politics of Culture
American Social Reflection: Thinking about Race and Society
Black Social Movements in 20th Century
Blacks, Indians and the Making of America
Civil War & the Reconstruction Era
Early Jazz: Music & World, 1900-45
Exploring the Melting Pot: Immigrant Narratives in the United States
Harlem Renaissance
Histories of Racial Formation in the Americas
History of Blacks in American Film
Images of African American Women
In and Out of the Burning House: The Art and Activism of James Baldwin
Interracial America
Modern Comedy in the U.S.
Politics & Culture 1960's
Politics of Race in US since WWII
Race in America
Race, Culture, and Politics during the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction
Race, Racism & Ethnicity
Sex, Race, and Space
Topics in Caribbean Literature
Women of Color History & Myths
Recent Faculty Scholarship:
Satchmo Blows Up The World
by Penny Von Eschen
At a time when the cultural contributions of black Americans were being derided, the U.S. State Department found it useful to send luminaries of Jazz music into the world as ambassadors, preceding Covert actions in Europe and Africa. In this Exploration of the significance of jazz as a propaganda tool during the cold war era, Penny Von Eschen looks at how this phenomenon was reflected in the domestic civil rights movement.
Ties That Bind
by Tiya Miles
The haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. It is the story of Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee war hero and successful farmer, and Doll, an African slave he acquired in the late 1790s. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together not only as master and slave, but also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history--including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along The Trail of Tears, and the Civil War.
