JOINED THE DEPARTMENT
2004
I am a historian of the United States, with particular emphasis in American cultural and intellectual history and African American Studies, with strong interests in race and representation, Atlantic studies, and science studies. My research reflects my desire to contribute to the larger critical conversations taking place in these fields, specifically around the role of race in shaping American cultural and intellectual discourse and production. More precisely, my research examines the ways in which “race” as a popular and scientific category operated as a potent signifier of difference—cultural, biological, social, and political—in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. However, recognizing the rising global significance of race as an organizing principle, as well as the transnational migration of ideas about race during this period (roughly the Gilded Age to the end of Word War II), my research extends across the Atlantic. It seeks to uncover the discursive relationship between America, other Western, and “subaltern” perspectives on imperialism, citizenship, and social belonging, as mediated primarily through the lens of race, but also through those of gender (ideas about femininity and masculinity), and sexuality.
BOOKS
- America in Africa: U.S. Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1847-1919 [IN PROGRESS]
- In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936 (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2010)
- Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp, eds., Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010)
DIGITAL PROJECTS
“To Enter Africa from America”: The United States, Africa, and the New Imperialism, 1847-1919 with Nadia Nurhussein, Nemata Blyden, and John Cullen Gruesser
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
- “‘The Negro’s Peculiar Work’: Jim Crow and Black Discourses on US Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1877-1900,” Journal of American Studies 52 (2018): 1-28
- “‘On the Brain of the Negro’: Race, Abolitionism, and Friedrich Tiedemann’s Scientific Discourse on the African Diaspora,”Germany and the Black Diaspora, eds. Mischa Honeck, Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov, and Martin Klimke, GHI Studies in German History (Berghahn Books, 2013)
- “‘Brightest Africa’ in the New Negro Imagination,” in Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance Beyond Harlem, eds. Davarian Baldwin and Minkah Makalani (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
- Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp, “The Descent of Darwin” in Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies, eds. Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 1-7.
- “Simians, Negroes, and the ‘Missing Link’: Transatlantic Evolutionary Debates on the ‘Negro Question,’” in Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies, eds. Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 191-207.
- “‘Gorilla Trails in Paradise’: Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link” Journal of American Culture 29:3 (September 2006): 321-336.
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
- NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Collaborative Research Grant, January 2019-December 2021
- REAF (Regensburg European American Forum) Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany, sponsored by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Bildung und Kultus, Wissenschaft, und Kunst, Summer 2017
- Center for Digital Research in the Humanities Start-up Grant, 2013-2014.
- Deutsche Bank Junior Scholar-In-Residence Fellowship, University of Heidelberg (Germany), Center for American Studies, 2007-2008.
TEACHING
African American Women’s History
History of Hip-Hop
United States History since 1877
African American History to 1877
Introduction to African American Studies
Introduction to Ethnic Studies
Graduate Seminar: Problems in Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in History
Graduate Seminar: Research and Writing in History
Graduate Seminar: The Professional Study of History
SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS
- College Engagement Award, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2017
- College Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2016
- Academic Star, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Fall 2009
- Faculty of the Year Award, The Afrikan People’s Union, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009