American Studies Seminar at Osaka University

American Studies Seminar at Osaka University

Date: 4 June 2019 (Tuesday)

Venue: Academic Exchange Conference Room, 3rd floor of Building E, Minoh Campus Osaka University

https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/index.html#minoh (access map)

https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/minoh/minoh.html (campus map: Building #3)



Lecturer:

Professor Renee Romano (Robert S. Danforth Professor of History, Oberlin College)

https://www.reneeromano.com/

https://www.oberlin.edu/renee-romano

She is the author or coeditor of five books:

• Renee C. Romano, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America (Harvard University Press, 2003)

https://www.reneeromano.com/race-mixing.html

• Renee C. Romano, “Narratives of Redemption: The Birmingham Church Bombing Trials and the Construction of Civil Rights Memory,” in Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford eds., The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2006)

https://www.reneeromano.com/the-civil-rights-movement-in-american-memory.html

• Renee C. Romano, “Not Dead Yet: My Identity Crisis as a Historian of the Recent Past,” in Claire Bond Potter and Renee C. Romano eds., Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History that Talks Back (University of Georgia Press, 2012)

https://www.reneeromano.com/doing-recent-history.html

• Renee C. Romano, Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America's Civil Rights Murders (Harvard University Press, 2014);

https://www.reneeromano.com/racial-reckoning.html and

• Renee C. Romano, Chapter 14 “Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth,” in Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter eds., Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018).

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/historians-on-hamilton/9780813590318



Session 1:10:30 – 12:00

Title: contemporary prosecution of civil rights era murders

I will give a lecture that offers an overview of that project.



Reading Assignments: the introduction and one chapter in Racial Reckoning



Discussants:

TBA



Round Table meeting over Lunch: 12:00-12:55





Session 2:13:00 – 14:30

Title: interracial marriage

The lecture I am planning will offer an overview of the changing politics of interracial marriage, especially from Reconstruction through the 1980s with illustrations from several film clips



Reading Assignments:

*a chapter of Race Mixing and

*Renee Romano, “Something Old, Something New: Black Women, Interracial Dating, and the Black Marriage Crisis,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies Volume 29, Issue 2 (1 September 2018) 126-53.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new genre of advice literature in the mid-2000s. Primarily written by and aimed at black women, it urges them to date and marry outside the race as a way to address the plight of successful educated black women who cannot find black husbands. In arguments that illuminate contemporary perspectives on long-standing debates among blacks about when and how to put down the burdens of history; racial identity and authenticity; the loyalty an individual owes to the community; and gender roles and responsibilities, this new advocacy literature urges black women to embrace their power and desirability in American society. At the same time, the literature reveals a nostalgic desire for a world where men were providers, women could afford to be the weaker sex, and traditional marriage could be a path to both personal and group advancement. Advocates offer their readers a romantic and appealing narrative that emphasizes black women’s power and agency, but this prescription has the potential to delegitimize black women’s lived experience and to reinforce discourses that stigmatize the black community.



Discussants:

TBA



All the books and the article mentioned above are available in my office.