Clulow, Adam

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The past is never dead. It's not even pastNOT EVEN PASTSearch the site ...   Like 8TweetNEP Faculty Feature – Dr.Ashley FarmerFrom the editors: NEP Faculty Features are a new series at Not Even Past designed tocelebrate the achievements of faculty and to showcase their wide-ranging work. Theyare a companion to NEP Author Spotlights which focus on graduate students. In this, the rst in the series, we feature the work of Dr Ashley Farmer, who was recently awardedtenure and promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Thisarticle highlights Dr Farmer’s groundbreaking scholarship while also showcasing herwork on Not Even Past.Dr. Ashley D. Farmer, is a historian of Black women’s history, intellectual history, andradical politics. She was recently awarded tenure as an Associate Professor in theDepartments of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University ofTexas at Austin. Her book, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed anEra  (UNC Press, 2017), is the  rst comprehensive study of black women’s intellectualproduction and activism in the Black Power era.  She is also the co-editor of NewPerspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (NUP Press, 2018), an anthology thatexamines four central themes within the black intellectual tradition: blackinternationalism, religion and spirituality, racial politics and struggles for social justice,and black radicalism. Dr. Farmer’s scholarship has appeared in numerous venues including The Black Scholarand The Journal of African American History. Her research has also been featured inseveral popular outlets including Vibe, NPR, and The Chronicle Review, and TheWashington Post.Dr. Farmer has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study atHarvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). TheClayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, the Carrie Chapman CattCenter for Research on Women and Politics at Iowa State University, and the AmericanAssociation of University Women (AAUW) have also supported her research. She hasalso been a leader of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) and aregular blogger for Black Perspectives.Dr. Farmer earned her BA from Spelman College, an MA in History and a PhD in AfricanAmerican Studies from Harvard University.  She is also the Co-Editor and Curator of theBlack Power Series with Ibram X. Kendi, published with NYU Press. BooksPrivacy  - TermsRemaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an EraIn this comprehensive history, Dr. Farmer examines black women’s political, social, andcultural engagement with Black Power ideals and organizations.Complicating the assumption that race and gender constraints relegated black womento the margins of the movement, Dr. Farmer demonstrates how female activists foughtfor more inclusive understandings of Black Power and social justice by developing newideas about black womanhood. This compelling book shows how the new tropes ofwomanhood that they created–the “Militant Black Domestic,” the “Revolutionary BlackWoman,” and the “Third World Woman,” for instance–spurred debate among activistsover the centrality of gender to Black Power ideologies, ultimately causing many of theera’s organizations and collectives to adopt a more radical critique of patriarchy.Making use of a vast and untapped array of black women’s artwork, political cartoons,manifestos, and political essays that they produced as members of groups such as theBlack Panther Party and the Congress of African People, Dr. Farmer reveals how blackwomen activists reimagined black womanhood, challenged sexism, and rede ned themeaning of race, gender, and identity in American life.Reviews and Praise for the BookFarmer challenges the basic assumptions of this period that the main role ofwomen was marginal or custodial within Black Power formations, or thatblack women simply left Black Power organizations to form their own groupsin reaction to intransigent sexism during the era. Instead, Farmer describesblack women as engaged in intense ideological struggles to shape thepolitical interventions and priorities of the organizations in which they wereinvolved.American Historical ReviewRemaking Black Power is an indispensable triumph. Painstakinglyresearched, artfully organized, crisply argued, utterly insightful, AshleyFarmer has remade Black Power scholarship like the black women shechronicles. This book unveils and dissects what has been hidden from theBlack Power–era for far too long: the black woman as theorist.Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author, Stamped from theBeginning“Farmer offers students of twentieth-century U.S. history a marvelous gift: anintellectual genealogy of radical black women’s black power activism,grounded in their political theorizing and cultural production and spanningthe post–World War II years through the 1970s.”The Journal of American History“““New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual TraditionFrom well-known intellectuals such as Frederick Douglass and Nella Larsen to often-obscured thinkers such as Amina Baraka and Bernardo Ruiz Suárez, black theoristsacross the globe have engaged in sustained efforts to create insurgent and resilientforms of thought. New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition is a collection oftwelve essays that explores these and other theorists and their contributions to diversestrains of political, social, and cultural thought. The book examines four central themes within the black intellectual tradition: blackinternationalism, religion and spirituality, racial politics and struggles for social justice,and black radicalism. The essays identify the emergence of black thought withinmultiple communities internationally, analyze how black thinkers shaped and wereshaped by the historical moment in which they lived, interrogate the ways in whichactivists and intellectuals connected their theoretical frameworks across time andspace, and assess how these strains of thought bolstered black consciousness andresistance worldwide.Reviews and Praise for the Book. . . New Perspectives makes an important contribution to the  eld ofintellectual history. Adding African Americans into the larger narrative, usingnon-traditional sources, and expanding focus beyond well-known black menpushes readers to expand their ideas about the de nition of intellectualhistory and the place of the black intellectual tradition within it . . . It could beused in either upper-level undergraduate or graduate classes about AfricanAmerican history or intellectual history.The Journal of African American HistoryThis is a marvelously insightful collection featuring contributions by adiverse array of rising stars in our  eld. In these pages you will learn not onlywhere Africana Studies is headed, but about Intellectual History moregenerally.Gerald Horne, author of The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots ofSlavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America andthe CaribbeanPublications on Not Even PastOne has to only look at a few headlines to see that many view black women organizersas important  gures in combating today’s most pressing problems. Articles urgingmainstream America to “support black women” or “trust black women” such as thefounders of the Black Lives Matter Movement are popular. Publications, such as Time,laud black women’s political leadership—particularly when they mount a challenge to thestatus quo such as Stacey Abrams’ victory in the Georgia Democratic Governor primary.At the core of these sentiments is the recognition that black women have developed andsustained a liberal democratic politics that is conscious of and responsive to theinterconnected effects of racism, capitalism, and sexism and that their approach canoffer insight into current socio-political issues. The media often frames these and otherwomen’s efforts as a manifestation of the current political moment divorced from thelonger tradition of black women agitators and organizers to which they belong. Many ofthe black women making headlines today for their work in advancing civil rights andsocial justice ideals draw from these earlier traditions, including from the Black PowerMovement of the 1960s and 70s.Read the full article here.Q: This is a large lecture class but you don’t start each class by lecturing. Instead youwrite that you cede “the  oor for the  rst  ve minutes of class to a student who wantsto raise an issue about campus, Austin, or the national climate.”  Can you tell us moreabout this?““RECENT POSTSIHS Book Talk: “Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile,” by Joshua Frens-String,University of Texas at AustinIHS Podcast: Colonial Peru’s Fractional Freedoms meet Morgan’s thesis: American Freedom, American SlaveryTeaching Global Environmental HistoryNEP Author Spotlight – Nathan StoneReview of The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem by Kristin A. Wintersteen(2021)NOT EVEN PAST is produced byThe Department of HistoryTHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN We are supported by the College of Liberal ArtsAnd our READERSDONATECONTACTAll content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise notedA: I like to always get to the classroom a  little bit before class starts.  I set everything upand then we just kind of talk informally as a class. I ask what’s going on campus? Or ifthey saw a certain topic in the news? To give an example around Halloween time, wetalked about costumes. I know students are aware of conversations about racism,sexism, and cultural appropriation around costumes, so I will  say something along thelines of: did you see this costume I saw online?  Does anybody know what’s happeningwith costumes on UT’s campus? And usually that will allow for someone to speak upabout something that they have been thinking about.I start that way at the beginning of the semester and I  nd it by mid semester studentscome in with something they want to talk about.  One day, I arrived a bit late, so I didn’tget to do this. And I had one student stop  me and say: “What are we talking abouttoday?  Because we always talk about stuff before we get started. So what’s our topictoday?” They wanted me to go back and do our informal discussion  rst before we gotstarted with our lesson plan for the day. It made me laugh, but also showed me that theyvalue these conversations that we have together. I think beginning class this way  isimportant for a couple of reasons. Typically, students bring up things that are happeningin the world that are related to class. We learned about something, say, the prisonindustrial complex in class. Students will then bring up an article they have seen aboutprisons in Texas. Or, we talk about the historical context of policing and then studentswill want to talk about the school’s relationship to policing or something like that. Sothese conversations  help students connect what’s happening in the classroom to thereal world. Also, in the spirit of consciousness raising, it also shows students that Ibelieve that I’m not the only person in the room that can offer valuable information orperspectives or who has something to teach or raise awareness about. We all cancontribute to helping each other understand what’s happening on our campus, in theworld, around us. And truth be told, because the students live and work and learn on thecampus in a way that faculty members don’t, this is honestly where I get a lot of mynews about what is happening on campus. So it’s mutually bene cialRead the full interview here.Posted April 6, 2021More BlogSign up to receive the monthly Not Even Past newsletterSUBSCRIBEYour email addressFEATURES BOOKS TEACHING DIGITAL & FILMBLOG IHS TEXAS SPOTLIGHTABOUT

NEP Faculty Feature – Dr. Ashley Farmer

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/2152/88095/2/NEP%20Faculty%20Feature%20-%20Dr.pdf

NEP Faculty Feature – Dr. Ashley Farmer

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