Memphis Historians

10/07/2026

The good news keeps coming! 🎉 🎉🎉

Congratulations to James Barney, whose new book “A Fragile Alliance: David Dinkins, Coalition Politics, and the Struggle to Govern a City in Crisis” is now available through Fordham University Press. James completed his PhD in History at the University of Memphis in 2022. His book examines the triumphs and struggles faced by David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor from 1990 to 1993.

A major reassessment of New York City’s first Black mayor and the fragile coalition politics that reshaped urban AmericaCharting the rise and fall of New York City’s first African American mayor, A Fragile Alliance offers a vivid, deeply researched accoun

10/07/2026

More good news! 🎉🎉

Dr. Selina Makana recently gave a lecture at Emory University for the Institute of African Studies’ fall seminar series. Her lecture, "For the Wellbeing of the Natives’: A Social History of Public Health in Angola, 1900-1950s,” was featured in The Emory Wheel (linked below!).

Assistant Professor of History Selina Makana discussed her ongoing research on the Portuguese response to the spread of diseases in the former colony.

09/24/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Susan O'Donovan, whose new book,
Moving Toward Freedom: The Political Education of Enslaved Americans, has been featured in The New York Review of Books.

In her review essay, historian Drew Gilpin Faust (President Emerita and Arthur Kingsley Porter University Research Professor at Harvard), praises Dr. O'Donovan for "the richness of her examples and her use of the lens of motion and travel," which "succeed in deepening our understanding."

Two recent books employ inventive approaches to read against the grain of the archive of slavery produced by those who built and benefited from it.

09/15/2026

Please join us for the Department of History’s Belle McWilliams Lecture with Professor Rebecca L. Davis (University of Delaware).

The lecture, “Fierce Desires: Variation, Conflict, and Pleasure in the History of American Sexuality,” will be held on Thursday, September 24th in McWherter Library, 2nd Floor Commons. A reception at 5:30PM will precede the lecture at 6.

The event is free and open to the public and is jointly sponsored by the History Department and the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities.

08/26/2026

The buzz continues for Dr. Susan O'Donovan's new book: Moving Toward Freedom: The Political Education of Enslaved Americans. Dr. O'Donovan was recently featured on WPYL's "Book Talk" series. Part I is now available!

Dr. Susan Eva O’Donovan is an associate professor of history at The University of Memphis. Her previous works include, Becoming Free in the Cotton South and Remembering the Memphis Massacre: An American Story with Beverly Bond. Today we’ll begin our two-part discussion her newest book, Moving To...

08/17/2026

08/17/2026

Check out Dr. Aram Goudsouzian's interview with Dr. Susan O'Donovan for Chapter 16 about her new book, Moving Toward Freedom: The Political Education of Enslaved Americans (Penguin, August 2026).

Congratulations, Dr. O'Donovan! 🎉

When we think of American slavery, we tend to think of plantations, with Black people bound to those lands. But as Susan O’Donovan illustrates in the groundb…