Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou analyzes Haitian Vodou's African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti. Split into two sections, the African chapters focus on history, economics, and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits, rituals, structure, and music of the region's religions sheds light on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement. At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, the people of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda deeply shaped the emergence of Haiti's creolized culture. The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou's Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the songs of Rasin Figuier's Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman's Guede, legendary rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor's Miami label, Mass Konpa Records. All the Vodou songs on the discs are analyzed with a method dubbed "Vodou hermeneutics" that harnesses history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou songs.

In the Jim Crow era, along with black churches, schools, and newspapers, African Americans also had their own history. Making Black History focuses on the engine behind the early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder shows how the study and celebration of black history became an increasingly important part of African American life over the course of the early to mid-twentieth century. It was the glue that held African Americans together as "a people," a weapon to fight racism, and a roadmap to a brighter future.Making Black History takes an expansive view of the historical enterprise, covering not just the production of black history but also its circulation, reception, and performance. Woodson, the only professional historian whose parents had been born into slavery, attracted a strong network of devoted members to the ASNLH, including professional and lay historians, teachers, students, "race" leaders, journalists, and artists. They all grappled with a set of interrelated questions: Who and what is "Negro"? What is the relationship of black history to American history? And what are the purposes of history? Tracking the different answers to these questions, Snyder recovers a rich public discourse about black history that took shape in journals, monographs, and textbooks and sprang to life in the pages of the black press, the classrooms of black schools, and annual celebrations of Negro History Week. By lining up the Negro history movement's trajectory with the wider arc of African American history, Snyder changes our understanding of such signal aspects of twentieth-century black life as segregated schools, the Harlem Renaissance, and the emerging modern civil rights movement.

Though the percentage of Hispanics in universities continues to grow, few Hispanic women/Latinas advance into leadership positions; instead, many are constrained by a glass ceiling. Therefore, the voices and experiences of those that have overcome these barriers in higher education are pivotal stories to be told. Ranging from the perceptions of these women's journeys to leadership, to an understanding of the barriers they encounter, to the question of their access to the resources they need, each factor is a critical component to understanding Hispanic women/Latinas in the higher education atmosphere. Comprehensive research in this area is needed to explore the themes of identity in terms of racial/ethic identification, social perception, and gender, along with systemic themes on the institutional level regarding the recruitment, retention, and promotion of a diverse higher education administration. Hispanic Women/Latina Leaders Overcoming Barriers in Higher Education explores the recruitment, promotion, retention process, and the barriers and resilience needed for Hispanic women/Latinas in higher education leadership roles. The chapters use data collected via a qualitative, phenomenological research study including open-ended interviews, field notes, biographical questionnaires, and a researcher's reflective journal. While covering topics surrounding these women's experiences such as identity themes, self-identification, institutional shortcomings, and valuable support systems, this book is ideally intended for Latina educators, informing legislators, educational officials, and higher education administrators along with practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in institutional equality, female empowerment, and Hispanic women/Latinas' journey in higher education.

An inside look at Black LGBTQ college students and their experiences Black and Queer on Campus offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ college students on campuses across the United States. Michael P. Jeffries shows that Black and queer college students often struggle to find safe spaces and a sense of belonging when they arrive on campus at both predominantly white institutions and historically black colleges and universities. Many report that in predominantly white queer social spaces, they feel unwelcome and pressured to temper their criticisms of racism amongst their white peers. Conversely, in predominantly straight Black social spaces, they feel ignored or pressured to minimize their queer identity in order to be accepted. This fraught dynamic has an impact on Black LGBTQ students in higher education, as they experience different forms of marginalization at the intersection of their race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on interviews with students from over a dozen colleges, Jeffries provides a new, much-needed perspective on the specific challenges Black LGBTQ students face and the ways they overcome them. We learn through these intimate portraits that despite the gains of the LGBTQ rights movement, many of the most harmful stereotypes and threats to black queer safety continue to haunt this generation of students. We also learn how students build queer identities. The traditional narrative of "coming out" does not fit most of these students, rather, Jeffries describes a more gradual transition to queer acceptance and pride. Black and Queer on Campus sheds light on the oft-hidden lives of Black LGBTQ students, and how educational institutions can better serve them. It also highlights the quiet beauty and joy of Black queer social life, and the bonds of friendship that sustain the students and fuel their imagination.

'A powerful, salient and gracefully written study of the corrosive dynamics of race in Britain from a trusted voice on the subject. We can all benefit from reading it' Diana Evans In this transformative book, Nicola Rollock, one of our pre-eminent experts on racial justice, offers a vital exploration of the lived experience of racism Miles, a successful lawyer, is mistaken for the waiter at a networking event. Femi is on the verge of breakdown having been consistently overlooked for promotion at her university. Nigel's emails, repeatedly expressing concern about his employer's forthcoming slavery exhibition, are ignored. Carol knows she can't let herself relax at the work Christmas party... This is racism. It is not about the overt acts of random people at the fringes of society. It's about the everyday. It's the loaded silence, the throwaway remark, the casual comment or a 'joke' in the workplace. It's everything. The Racial Code is an unprecedented examination of the hidden rules of race and racism that govern our lives and how they maintain the status quo. Interweaving narrative with research and theory, acclaimed expert Nicola Rollock uniquely lays bare the pain and cost of navigating everyday racism -- and compels us to reconsider how to truly achieve racial justice.