Recent Research

PUBLICATIONS

• Dr. Dorothy Smith Ruiz has a new book Black Families and Recession in the United States: The Enduring Impact of the Great Recession of 2007–2009
• Dr. Tanure Ojaide released Narrow Escapes
• Dr. Danielle Boaz published Banning Black Gods
• Dr. Akin Ogundiran has a new book: The Yoruba: A New History
• Dr. Julia S. Jordan-Zachery publised Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag: Twenty-First-Century Acts of Self-Definition
• Dr. Oscar de la Torre’s new book, The People of the River (ASWAD’s inaugural Outstanding First Book Prize, 2019; LASA’s Best Book on Amazonian Studies, 2020; BRASA’s Honorary Mention, Roberto Reis Book Award, 2019.)
• Dr. Ojaide released a new memoir, At Home, Away from Home: A Memoir
• Dr. Smith-Ruiz Published a New Book on African American Families

HONORS, PRIZES, AND AWARDS

• Dr. Akin Ogundiran named Chancellor’s Professor and receives First Citizens Bank Scholars Medal.
• Dr. Tanure Ojaide is the recipient of this year’s Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), in the Humanities category. This is the highest academic honor in Africa’s most populous country.
• Dr. Tanure Ojaide won the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols Award for the contributions of his creative writings to the struggles for human rights
• Dr. Akin Ogundiran’s coedited book, Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic named a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title
• Dr. Danielle Boaz named Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar in American Legal History. The award is granted by the American Society for Legal History to support the scholarship of legal historians at the beginning of their careers.

FELLOWSHIPS

Dr. Oscar de la Torre hasreceived a 2014 fellowship of the Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolitionat Yale University.

He will use the fellowship to finish his book manuscript “Leaving Behind the Big Snake: A History of Black Amazonia, 1850-1950”. The book is about the history of black rural communities in Amazonia, focusing on how enslaved Africans and Maroons used the eco-social characteristics of the region to dig their way out of slavery; and how they dialogued and competed with the elite and non-elite social groups to build a political identity that is rooted in their African ancestry. He will unfold the implications of these for black land ownership and citizenship in twentieth-century Brazil. Dr. Oscar de la Torre (Assistant Professor): A 2014 College Educators Research Fellowship awarded by UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies in support of his project titled “Environment, State, and Society in the Caribbean and Latin America” Dr. Akin Ogundiran named a Fellow at National Humanities Center and received Carnegie Fellowship for a collaborative sustainability project

PUBLICATIONS

Dr. Akin Ogundiran co-edited Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic (Indiana University Press, 2014).

Dr. Dorothy Smith-Ruiz’s two articles came out in the summer addressing different aspects of race, gender, and incaceration:

• The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women and Families. In Scott Bowman (ed.), Color Behind Bars: Racism in the U.S. Prison System. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Praeger (2014)
• (with Kopak, Albert) DSM-5 Substance Abuse Use Disorders and Offense Types Among Women in the Criminal Justice System. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 53:6, 433-454. (2014)

Dr. Akin Ogundiran is the recent author of two articles on the World Heritage Site – Osun Grove:

• “The Making of an Internal Frontier Settlement: Archaeology and Historical Process in Osun Grove (Nigeria), 17^th–18^th Centuries”, African Archaeological Review 31(1): 1-24. Using archaeological data and historical sources, his article sheds new light on the empirical and theoretical conceptualization of emergent community in an interstitial and active regional frontier, in West Africa during the mid-Atlantic period.
• The Osun-Osogbo Grove as a Social Common and an Uncommon Ground: An Analysis of Patrimonial Patronage in Postcolonial Nigeria. International Journal of Cultural Property 21, 2 (2014): 173-198.

Dr. Felix Germainpublished “A ‘New’ Black Nationalism in the United States and France in Journal of African American Studies, Volume 17, Number 3

. The article examines the relationship between Black Nationalism and demographic change in the Black populations of the US and France. The study highlights the impacts of post-civil rights politics and post-colonial migrations on the meaning and performance of Black Nationalism in these two racialized countries with different national approaches to racial discourse. Dr. Oscar de la Torre (Assistant Professor): “Are They Really Quilombos?: Black Peasants, Politics, and the Meaning of Quilombo in Present-Day Brazil.” Ofo: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 3, nos. 1 and 2 (2013), 101-122. Dr. Akin Ogundiran and Dr. Oscar de la Torre. Guest Editors of Ofo: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 3, nos. 1 and 2 (special issue on Community Engagement and Citizen Empowerment in Africa and the African Diaspora). Dr. Charles Pinckney (Lecturer): “Assessing the Mental Health Concerns of the Hip-Hop Generation for Culturally Competent Health Care,” in Health, Ethnicity, and Well-Being: An African American Perspective, eds. P. Kinsey and D. M. Louden. Xlibris, LLC (2014) Dr. Dorothy Smith-Ruiz (Associate Professor): “The intersectionalities of race, class, and mass incarceration,” in Black Behind Bars: African-Americans, Policing, and the Prison Boom, eds. Ray Von Robertson, Cognella Academic Publishing (2014), pp. 141-150.

• Dr. Oscar de la Torre published an article on Brazillian Quilombos in The Latin Americanist
• Dr. Tanure Ojaide received Fulbright Fellowship to research udje, rap battle, and calypso
• Dr. Felix Germain received a CHESS Junior Faculty Development Grant
• Dr. Akin Ogundiran published “The End of Prehistory? in The American Historical Review
• Dr. Debra Smith Published an article on the media and is cited in the Charlotte Observer on afro.
• Dr. Tanure Ojaide published a new collection of poetry on Love
• Dr. Ogundiran offers new interpretations on the ancient towns and cities in West Africa, Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology.

Affiliate Faculty, Dr. Eddy Souffrant published Identity, Political Freedom, and Collective Responsibility: The Pillars and Foundations of Global Ethics. Palgrave-Macmillan (2013).

OTHERS

There is an entry on Dr. Akin Ogundiran in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, edited by Claire Smith (Springer 2013). ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3 (Print), 978-1-4419-0465-2 (Online). His writings on the anthropology of material experience are also anthologized in an entry titled “Archaeology and Anthropology” in the same encyclopedia.