Publications
Books
Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)
Works in Progress
“Shadows and Sunlight: Race, Power, and Protest in America’s Mid-Century Carceral State, 1920-1959” (forthcoming)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Come Home to Us Once More Again”: Black Parents, Incarcerated Young Adults, and the Reach of the Law into Interwar Black Households,” Journal of African American History, under review
“Anxiety, Inequality, and the Perpetual Search for American Fulfillment,” Essays in History Journal, under review
“Love Bank: Leisure Space and Gentrification on Cherokee Street in St. Louis,” Modern Segregation Book Project, eds. Iver Bernstein and Heidi Kolk, submitted
“Drug-Mad Negroes: Cocaine and Black Migration in the Making of Drug Prohibition in Progressive Era New York City, 1880-1920", Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, forthcoming 2021
“Fighting and cutting and shooting, and carrying on:’ Saloons, Dives and the Black ‘Tough’ in Manhattan’s Tenderloin,” Journal of Urban History, 45, no. 5, pp. 925-940 (September 2019) (first published June 2018)
“Folklore, Urban Insurrection, and the Killing of the Black Hero in the Turn of the Century South,” The Mississippi Quarterly Journal, 67 (2016): 581-604 (awarded Louis D. Rubin Article Prize)
Essays, Blogs & Digital Media
“The Crucible of Black Criminality,” Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) Online blog, August 2020
“Uncontrollable Blackness’ in Context,” UNC Press Blog, June 2020
“Vigilante Justice and Police Violence in Popular Imagination,” Medium, June 2020
“Is This a Watershed Moment in Police Brutality Protest? Why I am Hopeful, and What History Tells Us,” Medium, June 2020
“Myths About Black Responses to Racial Violence in the Jim Crow Era,” Vox, February 2020
“Tupac Shakur,” for the Encyclopedia of African American Culture: From Dashikis to Yoruba, ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press (Forthcoming)
“‘A Time to Lift One’s Voice’: The East St. Louis Riot in a Migration Perspective,” Human Ties: Stories in
the Humanities Blog, Center for Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, 2017
“[T]hey’re knocking down negroes ‘round here,” Public Racial Violence and Black Self-Defense in Early 20th Century New York City, The Gotham Center Blog, 2016
“The Lyceum Theatre,” Retrofitting Rochester Digital History Series, Democrat & Chronicle, 2014
Book Reviews
Review of D’Weston Haywood, Let Us Make Men, The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement for The Journal of Southern History (forthcoming 2021)
Review of Lane Windham, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide, for Enterprise and Society Journal, 21, no. 1, (Spring 2020): 313-316
Review of Michael Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime, for The Journal of African American History, 105, no. 2, (Spring 2020): 335-337
Review of Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, for The Common Reader, 46, (Spring 2018)
Review of Keith Michael Green, Bound to Respect: Antebellum Narratives of Black Imprisonment, Servitude, and Bondage, 1816-1861, for Callaloo, 39, no. 4., (Fall 2016): 949-951
Review essay Talitha LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, Dennis Childs, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary, and Dan Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, for Reviews in American History, 44 (2016): 327-334
Review of Cara Caddoo, Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life, for The Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era 14 (2015): 266-267
Review of Catherine M. Paden, Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor, for The Journal of African American History 98 (Winter 2013): 166-168
Interviews
Interview for the Ninteenth-Century Studies Association, 19 Cents Blog, October 2020
Interview for The Joe Madison Show Sirius XM on Uncontrollable Blackness, September 2020
Interview for Washington University’s The Record on Uncontrollable Blackness, by Liam Otten, August 2020
Interview, for “Injustice Collector,” Audible Originals, by Peter McDonnell, July 29, 2020
Interview for Faculty Spotlight, for Arts & Sciences, Washington University, by Kelsey Arends, July 2020
Audio Interview, Black Agenda Report Radio, by Glen Ford, July 9, 2020
Video Interview, “Juneteenth and Collective Progress,” for The Source, June 19, 2020
Interview, “The Need for Black History on the Syllabus,” for OZY Media, June 9, 2020
Written Interview, Uncontrollable Blackness, “Book Forum Interview,” for Black Agenda Report, June 2020
Interview, “The History of Police Brutality Against Black People in America,” for ITV News, June 9, 2020
TV Interview, “Black Lives Matter: Beginning of the End for White Privilege?,” for TRT Worldwide TV News, June 10, 2020
Podcast Interview, “Examining Race and Police Conflict with Douglas Flowe,” for Real Crime Profile, (3 episodes), June 7, 2020
TV interview, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, June 4, 2020
Podcast Interview for The Economist, Checks & Balances podcast, interview by John Shields
Interview for L’Opinion, “Les Violences Policieres et la crise du Covid-19 sont une metaphore de la condition des Noirs aux Etats-Unis,” interview by Gilles Senges, June 3, 2020
Interview for Politico, “Many Crises, or Just One?” interview by Renuka Rayasam, June 2, 2020
"Omitted History" for the Center for Humanities (WashU)
Honors
Divided Cities Course Design Grant, 2020
Center for the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis
Excellence in Teaching Award, 2018
Council of Arts & Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis
Trailblazer Faculty Award, 2018
Center for Diversity & Inclusion, Washington University in St. Louis
Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Fall 2018
Washington University in St. Louis
Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Article Prize (for best article on Southern Literature), 2017
Society for the Study of Southern Literature
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Inequality and Identity, 2014
Washington University in St. Louis
Frederick Douglass Institute Research Award, 2012
Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies
Donald Marks "Dexter Perkins Prize" in History, 2012
University of Rochester - History Department
Provost’s Fellowship, 2007
University of Rochester
Recent Service to the Profession
Board of Directors for the Urban History Association, 2018-2021
Phi Alpha Theta Academic Essay Judge, 2016
Editorial Board Member and Manuscript reviewer for the Annuals of the Next Generation Journal, 2014-present
Courses at Washington University in St. Louis
L61 2201: Urban Crisis and Renewal
HIST 487: Race and Drugs in American History
AMCS 330C: The Politics of Black Criminality and Popular Protest
HIST 301U: Historical Methods – American Masculinity
HIST 2561: Urban America
AMCS 206: Reading Culture: Engaging the City
AMCS 230: Exploring Urban Change