Celebrating 15 Years of The New Black Studies Series

This year we’re celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the New Black Studies series. Check out the anniversary catalog here and read a letter from the acquisitions editor and comments from the series editors below!

Dear Reader,

In 2018 the University of Illinois Press celebrated its centennial. In 2019 we turn our attention to celebrating one of the most esteemed series at the Press: the New Black Studies Series, edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Dwight A. McBride. Over fifteen years, the series has published thirty-nine books by fifty different authors or editors and has garnered seventeen awards, including some of the most prestigious accolades across the fields of history, literature, and African American studies. The pages that follow feature each book in the series, and you will find stunning covers, glowing endorsements, influential scholars, and field-defining books.

The series launched in 2004 with Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas, edited by David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine. Over time, the series has supported theoretical and historical books that speak to the series editors’ mission to forge new directions for Black studies. The broad commitments of the series are reflected in the three titles that will be published during this anniversary year: Jonathan Fenderson’s Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s; Adrienne D. Davis and the BSE Collective’s edited collection Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital; and Annette Joseph-Gabriel’s Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire. I deeply believe in the work that the series has done and will continue to do, and I consider it the greatest of gifts to collaborate with Darlene and Dwight, who are as kind as they are brilliant.

I invite you to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the New Black Studies
Series with us. Celebrate by rounding out your NBS series collection by buying that
book you’ve been missing, taking down one of your favorite NBS books from your
shelf and revisiting it, or submitting a proposal to the series. We honor the books
that have been published over the last fifteen years that have laid the foundation
for recent work in the field of Black studies, and we look forward to the ways that
publications in the New Black Studies Series will continue to redefine the field for
future generations of Black studies scholars.

Sincerely,
Dawn Durante, Senior Acquisitions Editor

“I have thoroughly enjoyed being associated with the University of Illinois Press as a co-editor of the New Black Studies Series. The number of prizes and awards that books in our series have received over the years underscore the significance and exemplary quality of new Black studies scholarship. The authors have benefited from being part of our unique series. The series has helped to launch many young scholars onto exciting careers. Their innovative scholarship has infused the Black studies discipline with great excitement. The future looks bright. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the team at University of Press in the nurturing and production of such impressive Black studies scholarship.”
—Darlene Clark Hine

“I’m so proud of the works featured in the  New Black Studies Series. We’ve focused on publishing the work of scholars who are pushing against the traditional boundaries of our understanding of what Black studies is as a discipline. Indeed, I believe the series is helping to define the very future of the discipline itself. So it’s truly been a labor of love for me. I’m especially heartened by the work of some of the emerging scholars we’ve been privileged to publish, as they give me great confidence for the future of Black studies and the myriad contributions to research to come.”
—Dwight A. McBride

 

 

Learn more about how you can support Black studies scholarship at the University of Illinois Press here.


About Heather Gernenz

University of Illinois Press Publicity Manager