11 Books Published by Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about Race, Class, and Gender in America traces the journey and transformation of Mildred Sirls, a young Black girl in rural east Texas in the 1930s who picked cotton to help her family survive, to Dr. Mildred Pratt, Professor Emerita of Social Work, who, by lifting as she climbed, influenced hundreds of students and empowered a community.

As a daughter, sister, wife, mother, and scholar-activist, Mildred lived her core beliefs: she felt that it was important to validate individual human dignity; she recognized the power of determination and discipline as keys to success; and she had a commitment to empowering and serving others for the greater good of society. Such values not only characterized the life that she led, they are exemplified by the legacy she left. A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor reflects those core values. It celebrates ordinary lives and individuals; it demonstrates the value of hard work; and it illustrates the motto of the National Association of Colored Women, “lifting as we climb.”

A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor can be used for courses in history, ethnic studies, African-American studies, English, literature, sociology, social work, and women’s studies. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political economists, philosophers, social justice advocates, humanists, humanitarians, faith-based activists, and philanthropists.

A Promising Reality: Reflections on Race, Gender, and Culture in Cuba is a compilation of the reflections of a group of chief diversity officers, faculty, and educators from the United States about Cuba. As part of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education delegation to Cuba in July, 2015, A Promising Reality represents a collection of voices, experiences, and perspectives about issues of race, gender, cultural identity, and the African experience in Cuba.

Key themes explored include Cuban culture, the Cuban Revolution, politics, economics, education, equity, and social change. Utilizing narrative inquiry, some of the reflections are comparative with the United States, and some reflections focus exclusively on Cuba. The book takes readers on a journey of thought-provoking stories that reflect the excitement, uncertainty, complexity, and promising possibilities on the cusp of changing diplomatic, political, economic, and social relationships between the United States and Cuba.

A Promising Reality seeks to broaden the perspectives of its readers regarding US-Cuban relations. This book is ideal for courses on international relations, international studies, international affairs, comparative cultures, political science, education, politics, sociology, history, race, gender, and social justice. It is a must-read for anyone traveling to Cuba as part of study-abroad, professional development, or personal adventure.

This edited volume documents the unique experiences of women of color in higher education administration. From full professors, senior administrators, deans, presidents, and chancellors, women of color share their social justice journeys to leadership roles in the academy. With a focus on women of color presidents, a rich landscape is painted through their own voices of their experiences as they ascend and lead higher education institutions, navigating complex dynamics influenced by their race, culture, class, and gender status.

The narratives of African American, Native American, Asian American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican women leaders reflect the importance of their cultural heritage; the role of family values; the necessity of professional mentorship and support; the presence of personal resiliency; and the need to lift others while climbing and thriving. This book affirms the social justice imperative of diversifying the academy to include the scholarship, voices, perspectives, viewpoints, and leadership of women of color.

Through this work, we clearly see that women of color can climb to the highest rung; can penetrate the abode ceiling, the bamboo ceiling, and the plantation roofs; can sit in the president’s chair; and can thrive as leaders in the academy. This volume can be used in higher education, gender and women’s studies, leadership, and sociology courses on education and identity.

From race, sex, class, and culture, the multidisciplinary field of Internet studies needs theoretical and methodological approaches that allow us to question the organization of social relations that are embedded in digital technologies, and that foster a clearer understanding of how power relations are organized through technologies.

Representing a scholarly dialogue among established and emerging critical media and information studies scholars, this volume provides a means of foregrounding new questions, methods, and theories which can be applied to digital media, platforms, and infrastructures. These inquiries include, among others, how representation to hardware, software, computer code, and infrastructures might be implicated in global economic, political, and social systems of control.

Contributors argue that more research needs to explicitly trace the types of uneven power relations that exist in technological spaces. By looking at both the broader political and economic context and the many digital technology acculturation processes as they are differentiated intersectionally, a clearer picture emerges of how under-acknowledging culturally situated and gendered information technologies are impacting the possibility of participation with (or purposeful abstinence from) the Internet.

This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in Internet studies, library and information studies, communication, sociology, and psychology. It is also ideal for researchers with varying expertise and will help to advance theoretical and methodological approaches to Internet research.

Black Culture and Experience: Contemporary Issues offers a holistic look at Black culture in the twenty-first century. It is a collection of work that creates a synergy among authors and leads to a valuable resource on contemporary issues. Part One examines institutional, societal, and political issues like identity politics; the Rooney Rule; prosperity gospel; inequality in the criminal justice system; the American dream; the future of Black and Africana studies; and President Obama’s double consciousness. Part Two investigates social, cultural, and community issues such as the Affordable Care Act; Black women and obesity; Black men’s experience in marriage and relationships; sexual decision making; interracial relationships; and cultural racism. Part Three explores media, pop culture, and technology issues including the rise of urban fiction; hip hop and feminism; race in Super Bowl commercials; the construction of Black Diasporic identities; Whiteness in Black-oriented films; Black masculinity in Django Unchained; and the power of Black Twitter. This anthology contains work from leading scholars, authors, and other specialists who have been brought together to highlight key issues in black culture and experience today. The goal is to help readers understand where we are and where we still need to go, what is working and what we still need to work on, what is right and what is still wrong.

In Black Feminism in Education: Black Women Speak Back, Up, and Out, authors use an endarkened feminist lens to share the ways in which they have learned to resist, adapt, and re-conceptualize education research, teaching, and learning in ways that serve the individual, community, nation, and all of humanity. Chapters explore and discuss the following question: How is Black feminist thought and/or an endarkened feminist epistemology (EFE) being used in pre-K through higher education contexts and scholarship to marshal new research methodologies, frameworks, and pedagogies?

At the intersection of race, class, and gender, the book draws upon alternative research methodologies and pedagogies that are possibly transformative and healing for all involved in the research, teaching, and service experience. The volume is useful for those interested in women and gender studies, research methods, and cultural studies.

This volume launches the first sustained discussion of the need for a queer of color conceptual framework around Black, lesbian female identity. Specifically, this volume addresses the necessity for a more integrated framework within queer studies, in which the variables of race/ethnicity are taken into consideration. This book is unique in that it highlights a triple-jeopardy minority group that has been historically marginalized and concludes with the proposal of a much-needed framework for researchers to begin to create a baseline of knowledge/research under the umbrella of the Black Queer Identity Matrix.

Developing a more culturally diverse teaching force is one of the most important tasks facing the education system in the United States. Yet, in the midst of this challenge, little is known about who these teachers might be or where they might come from. We Got Next: Urban Education and the Next Generation of Black Teachers illustrates the journeys that Black pre-service teachers travel in their attempts to become educators. By looking at their educational life histories - their schooling experiences, teaching philosophies, and personal motivation - this book discovers what compels them to become teachers and the struggles and successes they encounter along the way. With texture and care, We Got Next helps professionals, policymakers, and teacher educators to understand what draws young African Americans toward the teaching profession and how to help them get there.

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2013.

Through ethnographically informed interviews and observations conducted with six Black middle and high school girls, Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak explores how young women navigate the space of Hip Hop music and culture to form ideas concerning race, body, class, inequality, and privilege. The thriving atmosphere of Atlanta, Georgia serves as the background against which these youth consume Hip Hop, and the book examines how the city’s socially conservative politics, urban gentrification, race relations, Southern-flavored Hip Hop music and culture, and booming adult entertainment industry rest in their periphery.

Intertwined within the girls’ exploration of Hip Hop and coming of age in Atlanta, the author shares her love for the culture, struggles of being a queer educator and a Black lesbian living and researching in the South, and reimagining Hip Hop pedagogy for urban learners.

“Rarely will one find an analysis of whiteness (and the problems associated with it) that is as comprehensive as this one. From incisive and wide-ranging critiques of how white folks deflect, deny, and evade the topic of racism, and the implications of our own racial identity and position, to an absolutely on-point interrogation of how racism and whiteness influence white teachers-in-training, and thus, the larger educational process, Robin DiAngelo demonstrates the kind of clarity of thought so needed on this important subject.”(Tim Wise, Author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority)

“This book goes well beyond Diversity Training 101. It is filled with comprehensive knowledge and useful tools for understanding racism and white people’s role in it. An invaluable resource for every educator, student, practitioner, and concerned citizen; you will be better prepared to address all forms of oppression after reading this book.” (Eddie Moore, Founder of The White Privilege Conference)

“With directness, sensitivity, and clarity, Robin DiAngelo leads the reader through a series of challenging and revelatory discussions that have profound implications for teaching and learning in today’s classrooms. Her question, ‘What does it mean to be white?’, underscores the pressing need for honest dialogue, particularly among white educators, about this tremendously important topic. I hope every teacher has the opportunity to read this book. Both they, and the students they teach, will be the better for it.”(Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, School of Education, University of Massachusetts and Author of The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities)

Defining Ourselves offers perspectives on black literature in the 1990s by twenty-nine black writers and critics, including Paule Marshall, Amiri Baraka, John A. Williams, Ishmael Reed, Walter Mosley, Marita Golden, Thulani Davis, Jill Nelson, Arthur Flowers, Lorna Goodison, Bebe Moore Campbell, Brent Staples, Terry McMillan, Stanley Crouch, Houston A. Baker Jr., Barbara Christian, Karla FC Holloway, and William W. Cook. The essays in this book are based on papers presented at the Fourth National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, which focused on the question of whether or not black literature in the 90s is experiencing a renaissance to end all renaissances. In addition to this topic, this book addresses the issues of the universality of black literature, the changing tastes and concerns of black readers, and the politics of publishing.