Suggested Readings on the Global Dynamics of Anti-blackness
The following materials have been suggested by faculty members in Boston College’s International Studies Program as resources for students and faculty alike as we strive to better understand the global histories and dynamics of anti-blackness and the social movements, political structures, economic systems, theologies and ideologies that perpetuate or resist them. Items on the first tabbed list have a transnational or global focus, even when discussing the United States; the second tabbed list offers resources primarily about the U.S. context.
This resource list is of course just a beginning, and although we will add to it in the coming months, no such list can be comprehensive. For deeper study, we especially encourage current students to enroll in courses listed or cross-listed in African and African Diaspora Studies, more than 20 of which can count as electives in the IS major or minor.
Note to readers: The links below point to the BC Library catalog listing, which itself includes links to listings on Amazon.com and other libraries.
- Kelebogile Zvobgo and Meredith Loken, "Why Race Matters in International Relations," Foreign Policy 6.19.2020
[IR theories, history of the study of IR] - Herman L. Bennett, African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic (UPenn, 2018)
[sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, political sovereignty, slavery] - Julius S. Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (Verso 2018)
[slavery, Caribbean, transatlantic] - Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Harvard, 1993)
[cultural studies, postcoloniality, Caribbean] - Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (UPenn, 2018)
[Black nationalism, African diaspora] - Vincent Lloyd and Andrew Prevot, eds., Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics (2017)
[Christian theology, race, racism, anti-blackness] - Vincent Lloyd, ed., Race and Political Theology (Stanford, 2012)
[Christianity, Islam, Judaism, secularism, political theology, Europe, USA] - Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, Aug. 2020)
- Joseph Drexler-Dreis and Kristien Justaert, eds., Beyond the Doctrine of Man: Decolonial Visions of the Human (Fordham, 2019)
[Decolonization, theological anthropology, ethics, Caribbean, Africa, Europe] - M. Shawn Copeland Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Fortress, 2010; 2nd ed. coming Nov. 2020)
[Theological anthropology, womanist (black feminist) theology] - Katie Cannon, Emilie Townes, Angela Sims, eds., Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (Westminster John Knox, 2011)
[Womanist (black feminist) theology; Christian ethics] - Kyrah Malika Daniels, “Whiteness in the Ancestral Waters: Race, Religion, and Conversion within North American Buddhism and Haitian Vodou,” Journal of Interreligious Studies v23 (2018): 90-102.
[Haitian Vodou, Buddhism, comparative religion, conversion, whiteness studies] - Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, "Memwa se paswa: Reanimating the Slave Past in Haiti” in The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture, eds. Soyica Diggs Colbert, Robert J. Patterson and Aida Hussen-Levy, eds. (Rutgers, 2016): 86-106.
[Slavery, memory, Haiti, USA] - David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (UVA, 1996)
[Religion, race, colonialism, South Africa, southern Africa] - Katie Grimes, “Antiblackness,” Theological Studies 81.1 (March 2020): 169-80.
- J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford, 2008)
- Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale, 2011).
- Katie Grimes, Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery (Fortress Press, 2017)
[Catholicism, slavery, USA, Caribbean, South America] - Katherine McKittrick, On Being Human as Praxis (Duke University Press, 2014)
[Sylvia Wynter, postcoloniality, anthropology, race, Caribbean, resistance] - David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Wiley, 2011)
[critical race theory, neoliberalism, Europe, Africa, Latin America, United States, Israel/Palestine] - Noel Leo Erskine, Plantation Church: How African American Religion was Born in Caribbean Slavery (Oxford, 2014)
[slavery, Santeria, Black church history, Caribbean, United States] - Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (Routledge, 2004)
[cultural studies, postcoloniality]
We recommend a number of the widely-circulated reading lists for cultivating anti-racism in the US domestic context, including:
- Anti-Racism Resources, by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein
- Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus, by Catherine Halley
- Scaffolded Anti-Racism Resources, by Anna Stamborski, Nikki Zimmermann, and Bailie Gregory
- Essential Reading, author unknown
- American Economics Association, Diversifying Economics: History of Race and Racism (2020)
- Resources on Black Catholics in the United States – #BlackCatholicsSyllabus, by Tia Noelle Pratt
Additional recommended work on the U.S. domestic context:
- Annette Gordon-Reed, "America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy," Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2018.
- Podcast: Becoming Less Racist: Lighting the Path to Anti-Racism , with Simran Jeet Singh and guests (Religion News Service, June 2020-)
- Video: Rev. Bryan Massingale, “The Magis and Justice,” Ignatian Family Teach-In (2017).
- Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, Aug. 2020)
- Podcast: Nichole Flores, “We Who Believe in Freedom: Ella Baker’s Creed,” The Project on Lived Theology, February 2019.
- “The Catholic Church and Antiblackness,” An interview with Katie Grimes by Patrick Hyland (Jesuit Post, 2020).
- kihana miraya ross, “Call it What It Is: Anti-Blackness” (New York Times June 4, 2020)
- Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2018). (National Book Award winner). >> An abridged and adapted version co-authored with Jason Reynolds is titled Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You (2020).
- James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis, 2013); A Black Theology of Liberation (Orbis, 1970/2010).
- Video: Rev. Bryan Massingale, “How the Church Can Combat Racism and White Privilege,” America (June 2020)
- Jeremy V. Cruz, “Strengthening Black-Brown Solidarity: Latino/a Race, Unauthorized Blacks, and the Roots of Anti- Brown Violence,” Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium 10 (2018): 29-37.
- Karen Teel, “What Jesus Wouldn’t Do: A White Theologian Engages Whiteness,” in Christology and Whiteness: What Would Jesus Do? ed. George Yancy, 19-35 (Routledge, 2012)
- Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Orbis Books, 2015).