African American studies

Farewell Mr Rock’n’Roll

The web is bursting with tributes and obituaries to Chuck Berry, the songwriter and guitarist who died on Friday at the age of 90. And this is understandably so. Berry’s famous repertoire which includes songs like ‘Johnny B Goode,’ ‘Maybellene,’…

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The Man – or his Times?

Having just been to see Race, the (rather boring, I have to say) bio-pic about the great African American athlete, Jesse Owens, I found myself thinking about people like Owens, and Joe Louis, and contrasting them with Muhammad Ali.  How…

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Discovering Native America

When I was thinking of a subject for a possible blog post on my Fulbright experience, I had no shortage of options. I could have easily talked about teaching American history to American students at Elon University, which has been…

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North Carolina Bound

This weekend I leave for Elon in North Carolina, where I will be spending four months teaching and researching as part of the Fulbright-Elon Scholar Award 2015-16. I was delighted to receive this award as I would have the opportunity…

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Remembering Rosa Parks

The commemorations this week of the arrest of Mrs Rosa Parks on 1st December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, remind us that historians often seem to be obsessed with remembering “great” people or “key” moments in History. For many people Mrs…

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