11 GRADUATE CENTER SCHOLARS WHO ARE CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON AFRICAN AMERICANS AND DRAWING ATTENTION TO CRITICAL ISSUES

Graduate Center scholars and alumni are correcting misrepresentations of African Americans in history and contemporary society, and focusing attention on critical cultural issues.

Want to learn more? Here are 11 ways to start:

1. Read Professor Carla Shedd (Sociology, Urban Education)’s award-winning Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, recently named to The ZORA Canon

 2. Learn about Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s (Earth and Environmental Sciences) three decades of scholarship and trailblazing advocacy in the movement to abolish prisons

3. And about Professor Mandë Holford’s (GC/Hunter, Biochemistry, Biology, and Chemistry) interdisciplinary research, which landed her on The Root 100 list


4. And Professor and alumna  Dána-Ain Davis’s (GC/Queens, Anthropology/Urban Studies) recent work, which analyzes racism within the medical world

5. As well as Professor Jill Bargonetti’s (GC/Hunter; Biology, Biochemistry/Biological Sciences) research on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which disproportionately affects African American women

 6. Other disrupters include Professor Herman L. Bennett (History), who is challenging conventional ideas about the history of slavery

7. And Graduate Center alumnus LeRonn P. Brooks (Ph.D. ’09, Art History), the first full-time staff member to join the Getty Research Institute’s African American Art History initiative

8. Welcome new Professor Tanisha C. Ford (History), whose projects center on the experiences of black women, girls, and non-binary femmes

9.  Tsedale Melaku (Ph.D. ’16, Sociology) examines the challenges black female associates face as a result of institutional practices that marginalize them based on race and gender in her new book, You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer

 10. Read a recent study of the Black Lives Matter movement by lead author and alumnus Jeremy Sawyer (Ph.D. '17, Psychology), now an assistant professor at Kingsborough Community College

11. Learn how about J. Phillip Thompson (Ph.D. ’90, Political Science) has returned to his New York City roots as the new deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives 
 
Bonus: More Books to Read

• Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State, by Ira Dworkin (Ph.D. '03, English) 
• A History of African American Theatre, by James V. Hatch, professor emeritus of theatre 
• FREEDOM: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle, co-authored by Distinguished Professor Leith Mullings (Anthropology)