Faculty and Students In the News

What would justice look like for Emmett Till 64 years after his death became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement? Rutgers scholar Christine Zemla traveled to the Mississippi Delta to pose that question to the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Till’s cousin and the last living eyewitness to his abduction, in preparation for her new fall course, “Remembering Emmett Till.” “Till’s story is Trayvon Marti...

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - Many people may call themselves Bruce Springsteen’s biggest fan, but Louis Masur has legitimate claim to that title.This fall, the Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers–New Brunswick will share his admiration for the music icon in his course, “Springsteen's American Vision.”Masur said the class will explore how Springsteen’s vision illustrates a gen...

NJ Folk Fest Promo 2019

Interview with Professor Carla Cevasco Interview with Professor Jimmy Sweet Interview with Professor Maria Kennedy Interview with Professor Michael Rockland Interview with Professor Nicole Fleetwood Interview with Professor Sylvia Chan-Malik

              By  Nicole R. Fleetwood One evening last spring, my son packed his backpack for school the next day and sighed. “Mom, it’s weird walking around near my school,” he said. His somber tone made me afraid of what would come next—confessions of bullying, peer pressure, or, as had been reported about the eighth-graders, witnessing kids drinking or making out near the campus. “Why?” I asked, trying to sound...

Angus Kress Gillespie speaks with Andrew Urban about the "States of Incarceration" exhibit at the Douglas Library at Rutgers University.

How Can Images Tell the Story of Mass Incarceration in the US? Most prisons and jails across the United States do not allow prisoners to have access to cameras. At a moment when 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the US, 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass incarceration when the imprisoned don’t have control over...

Monumental Hatred The ongoing struggle against white supremacy by Louis P. Masur A slaveholder wrote the Declaration of Independence and a man who believed in black inferiority later transformed the ideas it laid out into universal gospel. Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were men of their times, of course, times in which the idea of white supremacy was far more prevalent than in the 21st cent...

Holland Tunnel Interview with Prof. Gillespie  HOLLAND TUNNEL TO BE FEATURED BY PBS Rutgers Professor Interviewed Be sure to watch for the upcoming PBS broadcast of "10 Modern Marvels" that will air on July 24 at 8:00 pm.  The producer, Geoffrey Baer, selected ten heroic works of American civil engineering to feature in this segment.  One of those ten was the first underwater vehicular tunnel, namely...

STATE GOODS: ART IN THE ERA OF MASS INCARCERATION Through June 16. Andrew Freedman Home, 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx; 718-293-8100, andrewfreedmanhome.org. Nicole Fleetwood became interested in prison art in the 1990s after her 18-year-old cousin was sentenced to life in prison, according to a wall text in “State Goods: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration” at the Andrew Freedman Home. Read  ...

Donald Trump is a Civil War Revisionist "Often overlooked in the brouhaha about Donald Trump’s comments on Andrew Jackson and the Civil War is the revisionist perspective that he offers. The President suggested that Andrew Jackson would have prevented the Civil War and the conflict could have been avoided. “Had Andrew Jackson been a little later,” said the President, “you wouldn’t have had the Civi...

American Studies Senior Janine Puhak Reveals Other identity At Senior Night, Janine Puhak ended her four-year career as the first female Scarlet Knight in history. During her time at Rutgers, she kept her identity a secret, living a high profile double life beneath the armor. Click here to read more.

From China to Russia to the U.S. and Western Europe   "The New Jersey Department of State recognized 113 ethnic groups in New Jersey," Gillespie said. "What many people don't realize is that the receiving station for immigrants was Ellis Island, so New Jersey was a port of entry for immigrants - that's why New Jersey is one of the most ethnically diverse states."Each year, the New Jersey Folk Festiv...

Professor Jeff Decker Wins NEH Award   Click here to read more.

Crocker Memorial Lecture

Prof. Jeff Decker publishes The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government Oxford University Press Feature In 1973, a group of California lawyers formed a non-profit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to defending conservative principles in court. Calling themselves the Pacific Legal Foundation, they declared war on the U.S. regulatory state--the...

Lou Masur Wins SAS Teaching Award

Nicole Fleetwood Wins Whiting Fellowship

12 Bars Can't Hold Me: Incarceration and Commercial Blues Recordings of the 1920s and 1930s