Follow @yaleRELIbooks As 2013 draws to a close, we reflect on the superlatives of the past year. Everyone is busy writing up their own “Best of 2013” lists and “Year in Review” articles. Amidst all of the reflection on our high points, we cannot escape recollections of our lows. In
One night in Germany in 2009, after having given a talk that pointed out the atrocities committed on African soil by Islam and Christianity, Wole Soyinka was confronted by a young man, who loudly remarked across the entire dinner table, “Africans, you must admit, are inherently inferior. You must be,
Ivan Lett— Here in New Haven, the memory of La Amistad and its historic court trial pervades the memory of our coastline. Popular recreations of the slave ship’s story, such as the 1997 Spielberg film or the ship replica at Mystic Seaport, remind us of the horrors of slavery and
Not all slave owners were white. On the eve of the American Revolutionary War, South Carolina’s slave population was nearly double that of white Europeans, and while there were a still a handful of free blacks, “free” took a marginalized status in the face of color discrimination. Perhaps the richest
This afternoon at 4:30pm, Molly Rogers, author of Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in 19th-Century America, will be interviewed by eminent historian David Blight about her book here on Yale’s campus. The book retells the story of seven South Carolina slaves who were photographed at the request of Swiss
National African American History Month! Yale Press has a wide range of books covering this topic for you to check out. Here’s just a sample: Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, edited by Susan Earle In paintings, murals, and book illustrations, Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) produced the most powerful visual legacy of
In an article on “their favorite books of 2007,” New York Times art and architecture critics write “there is more to art books than gorgeous illustrations.” As an example of a book that is more than just “gorgeous illustrations, they name Yale’s The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece,
In honor of Black History Month, we are proud to release a new paperback version of Erskine Clarke’s Dwelling Place, winner of the 2006 Bancroft Prize in American History. David Brion Davis of the American Historical Review calls it “one of the best and most important studies of American slavery
Posted by Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations: Among the more than 12,000 quotations in The Yale Book of Quotations, many have stories to tell transcending the quotation itself. The famous epithet for the discipline of economics, “the dismal science,” is said by some standard reference
Columbia University recently announced the winners of the 2006 Bancroft Prize in American History. Yale University Press is pleased to announce that one of this year’s recipients is Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic by Erskine Clarke. Encompassing the years 1805 to 1869, Dwelling Place brings to life the simultaneous but