Curriculum Vitae
Mari Nagasue Crabtree
African American Studies Program / College of Charleston
66 George Street / Charleston, SC 29424
[email protected]
AREAS OF INTEREST
African American history; African American literature; racial violence and memory studies;
mass incarceration; irony, humor, and deception in African American culture; Afro-Asian
cultural syncretism
EDUCATION
Ph.D., History, Cornell University, 2014
Dissertation: “The Devil is Watching You: Lynching and Southern Memory, 1940−1970”
Advisors: Nick Salvatore, Robert L. Harris, Jr., Russell J. Rickford, Kenneth A. McClane
M.A., History, Cornell University, 2010
Fields: African American History, American History, African American Literature
A.B., Black Studies, Amherst College, 2003
Honors: magna cum laude
Advisors: Jeffrey B. Ferguson, David W. Blight
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
College of Charleston (2014−present)
African American Studies Program, assistant professor
History Department, affiliate faculty
Cornell University (2007−2014)
Department of History, teaching assistant
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
“‘My Soul is a Witness’: Lynching and Southern Memory, 1940−1970.” (book manuscript
solicited by Yale University Press for the New Directions in Narrative History series).
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ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
“On Subterfuge: The Politics of Deception in African American Culture.” (accepted, Raritan).
“Periodizing Lynching, Contextualizing Violence.” In Reconstruction at 150: Reassessing the
Revolutionary “New Birth of Freedom,” edited by Orville Vernon Burton and J. Brent Morris.
(accepted).
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Sounding the Color Line: Music and Race in the Southern Imagination, by Erich
Nunn. African American Review (forthcoming).
Review of Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida, by Tameka
Bradley Hobbs. Journal of Southern History 82, no. 4 (November 2016): 950– 951.
Review of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, by Talitha L.
LeFlouria. H-Afro-Am, H-Net Reviews. June, 2016.
Review of Black Woman Reformer: Ida B. Wells, Lynching, and Transatlantic Activism, by
Sarah L. Silkey. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 114, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 261–263.
DIGITAL PROJECTS AND ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
“The Struggle for Integration at the College of Charleston, 1943–2015,” Lowcountry Digital
History Initiative, Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston (under review)
“The History of Jim Crow,” Backlist, May 2016. http://backlist.cc/lists/jim-crow.
Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery, research assistant
for Prof. Edward Baptist, digital humanities project, 2013–2014. http://freedomonthemove.org/.
“African Americans and Emigration,” “Mound Bayou,” and “Marcus Garvey and the UNIA” in
The American Yawp: A Free and Online, Collaboratively Built American History Textbook.
2015. http://americanyawp.com/.
“Elegy and Effigy,” The Appendix: A New Journal of Narrative and Experimental History, 2, no.
2 (May 2014). http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/elegy-and-effigy.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
“Bodies and Souls: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the Meaning of Black Liberation”
(article manuscript; expected completion date: August 2017).
“Blues Memories: Theorizing Trauma and the Blues Sensibility in the African American
Experience” (article manuscript; expected completion date: May 2017).
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“Shuffling Like Uncle Tom, Thinking Like Nat Turner: Subversion, Deception, and Irony in the
African American Political Tradition” (book manuscript; expected completion date: 2020)
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
Faculty Research Grant, College of Charleston, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017.
Pedagogy and Teaching Grant for New Course Development, College of Charleston, Fall 2015,
Fall 2016.
Walter and Sandra LaFeber Research Assistance Fund, Cornell University, Summer 2013.
George B. Kirsch Scholarship, Cornell University, Summer 2012.
Travel Grant from the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American
History and Culture, Duke University, 2012.
Burney Parker Research Fellowship, Baylor University, 2012.
Joel and Rosemary Silbey Fellowship, Cornell University, 2012.
Graduate School Research Travel Grant, Cornell University, 2011.
Society for the Humanities and Humanities Council Dissertation Writing Group Grant, Cornell
University, 2010–2011, 2012–2013, 2013−2014.
Daughters of the American Revolution Fellowship, Cornell University, Fall 2010.
Society for the Humanities Graduate Travel Research Grant, Cornell University, Fall 2010.
American Studies Graduate Research Grant, Cornell University, 2009–2012.
Forris Jewett Moore Fellowship, Amherst College, 2007–2010.
Sage Fellowship, Cornell University, 2007–2008, 2011-2012.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
College of Charleston (2014−present)
African American Studies Program and History Department, assistant professor
Introduction to African American Studies (Fall 2014–Fall 2016)
Introduction to African American Music (Spring 2015, Fall 2015)
Mass Incarceration and Its Roots (Spring 2016, Spring 2017)
Remembering and Forgetting: Race, Violence, and American Memory (Fall 2015, Spring
2017)
Mongrel America: Miscegenation, Passing, and the Myth of Racial Purity (Spring 2015,
Fall 2016)
When Bruce Lee Meets Bruce Leroy: Afro-Asian Political and Cultural Connections
(Spring 2017)
Capstone in African American Studies (Spring 2016)
Internship in African American Studies (Spring 2015, Fall 2015)
Independent Study: Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogy (Fall 2016)
Cornell University (2008−2014)
Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, instructor
Historical Memory, Historical Trauma (Spring 2013)
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Mongrel America: Miscegenation, Passing, and the Myth of Racial Purity (Spring 2011,
Fall 2012)
American Studies Department, teaching assistant
Popular Culture in the United States, 1950 to the Present (Prof. Glenn Altschuler, Spring
2014)
American Cinema (Prof. Sabine Haenni, Fall 2013)
Varieties of American Dissent (Prof. Nick Salvatore, Spring 2009)
History Department, teaching assistant
Introduction to American History, 1865–present (Prof. Aaron Sachs, Spring 2010)
Obama and Lincoln (Prof. Edward Baptist, Fall 2009)
The History of Evolution (Prof. William Provine, Fall 2008)
Summer College, teaching assistant
Democracy and Its Discontents (Prof. Nick Salvatore, Summer 2008−2013)
CONFERENCES AND COLLOQUIA
“Passing, Subversion, and Narratives of Lynching in Mat Johnson’s Incognegro and George
Schuyler’s Black No More,” American Studies Association Meeting, Chicago, IL, November
9−12, 2017.
“Liberating the Spirit, Securing the Body: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Discourses of
National Redemption,” African American Intellectual History Society Conference, Nashville,
TN, March 25, 2017.
“Lynching in the American Imagination,” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference,
Charleston, SC, February 2, 2017.
“On Subterfuge: Deception, Subversion, and Critique in African American Culture,” Aesthetics
Work Group, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, October 23, 2015.
“The Ghosts of Lynchings Past: Haunting, Otherwordly Justice, and the Memory of Lynching in
the American South,” Palmetto Connections Symposium, University of South Carolina, Beaufort,
Beaufort, SC, April 18, 2015.
‘Till I Get Satisfied: Lynching, Memory, and the Delta Blues,” Annual Association for the Study
of African American Life and History Convention, Memphis, TN, September 25, 2014.
Yale Public History Institute Summer Seminar, Yale University, New Haven, CT, July 20–24,
2014.
“Lynching Reincarnated: Imagining and Re-Imagining Racial Violence in the Civil Rights Era,”
History Colloquium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, November 26, 2013.
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"Developing an Ear for Silence: Lynching and Erasure in Southern Memory," Historical
Disobedience: Transgressive Subjects, Methods, and Stories, History + Conference, UCLA, Los
Angeles, CA, November 1, 2013.
“Specters of Lynching in the American South,” Syracuse Graduate History Conference:
Violence and Resistance, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, March 29, 2013.
“‘How Blue Can You Get?’: The Blues Sensibility and Confronting the Legacies of Lynching,”
National Council for Black Studies National Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 14, 2013.
“Haunting: Ghost Stories, Deathbed Confessions, and Otherworldly Justice for Lynching
Survivors,” History Colloquium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, February 14, 2013.
“Anatomy of a Lynching,” History Colloquium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, October 4,
2012.
“Reading Lynching as Trauma,” Americas Colloquium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, April 25,
2011.
“‘Asia for the Asiatics’: Imperial Japan and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Anti-Colonial Crusade,” National
Council for Black Studies National Conference, Cincinnati, OH, March 19, 2011.
“‘Asia for the Asiatics’: Pan-Asianism and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Relationship to Imperial Japan,”
Americas Colloquium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, February 3, 2009.
GUEST LECTURES
“Liberating the Spirit, Securing the Body: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Discourses of
Redemption,” Friends of the Library Faculty Lecture and Lunch Series, College of Charleston,
Charleston, SC, November 9, 2016.
“Lynching and Southern Memory,” Charleston and the Civil Rights Movement (Prof. Jon Hale),
Department of Teacher Education, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, October 14, 2014.
“The Blues Sensibility: Lynching, Trauma, and African American Memory,” Introduction to
U.S. History III (Prof. Michael Schmidli), History Department, Bucknell University, Lewisburg,
PA, March 18, 2014.
“Blood at the Grassroots: Lynching, Memory, and Community in the Civil Rights Era,” African
American Social History, 1910−2000 (Prof. Nick Salvatore), Cornell University, November 11,
2013.
“‘To Redeem the Soul of America:’ Critical Debates in the Civil Rights Movement,”
Introduction to American History, 1865–present (Prof. Aaron Sachs), Cornell University, April
15, 2010.
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SERVICE AND COMMITTEE WORK
Professional Service
Conference panel chair, “James Baldwin, Howard Thurman, Ta-Nehisi Coates and
Visions of Black Liberation,” African American Intellectual History Society
Conference, March 25, 2017.
Conference panel moderator, “Slavery’s Long Legacy,” Nineteenth Century Studies
Association Conference, Charleston, SC, February 3, 2017.
Conference panel chair, “Site Specific, Circular Sites: Mapping Art in the Mobile
Caribbean City,” Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora
Biennial Conference, Charleston, SC, November 5, 2015.
Conference panel chair and judge, “The United States in the Nineteenth Century,” Phi
Alpha Theta Carolinas Regional, Bluffton, SC, April 18, 2015.
College of Charleston – Campus-Wide Committees
Charleston Civil Rights Film Festival: “Scarred Justice: A Conversation with Director
Judy Richardson and Historian Mari Crabtree,” speaker, April 20, 2017.
Library Committee, secretary, 2016–2017.
Planning Committee for Ta-Nehisi Coates Visit, Race and Social Justice Initiative,
committee member, 2016–2017.
• Student Seminar with Ta-Nehisi Coates, moderator and organizer, March 21,
2017.
Innovative Teaching and Learning in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, committee chair,
2015–2018.
Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program, faculty associate, 2015–2017.
Wells Fargo Distinguished Public Lecture Series, organizer
• Nicole Maskiell, “The Runaway Who Passed as Slave Catcher: Native
Slavery and the Strange Histories of the Color Line,” September 26, 2016.
• Stephen Berry, “Close Encounters of the Shipboard Kind,” October 8,
2015.
College of Charleston – Campus-Wide Activities
Film Screening and Discussion: “Unfair Justice: A Screening of 13th for Discussions on
Justice,” moderator, January 16, 2017.
Teach-In on Post-Election America, organizer and panelist, December 5, 2016.
Faculty Liberal Arts and Sciences Colloquium: “Crime and Punishment,” Fall 2016.
Office of Sustainability Greenbag Lunch Series: “Institutional Racism,” panelist, April
6, 2016.
“The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” Panel,
moderator, February 13, 2016.
College Reads Discussion of Freedom Summer, discussion leader, August 24, 2015.
Faculty Liberal Arts and Sciences Colloquium: “Friendship and Enmity,” May 2015.
College of Charleston – African American Studies Program
Invited Lecture by Derek Black, “Ending Zero Tolerance: The Crisis of Absolute School
Discipline,” organizer, April 5, 2017.
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Invited Lecture by Dexter Thomas, “Niggers and Japs: The Logic of Japanese Hip Hop
Nationalism,” organizer, March 16, 2017.
Search Committee for African American Studies Director, committee member, 2016–
2017.
African American Studies Book Discussion Series, organizer and moderator, 2016–2017.
Search Committee for Visiting Professor of African American Literature, committee
member, 2016.
Emerging Scholar Lecture Series, organizer, 2015–2017.
• Sarah Haley, “The Carceral Life of Gender: Convict Labor, Jim Crow Modernity,
and Black Feminist Refusal,” January 19, 2016.
• Vanessa Agard-Jones, “‘After the End of the World:’ A Black Feminist Analytic
for the Anthropocene,” February 20, 2017.
Artist Lecture Series, organizer, 2015–2016.
• Amaud Jamaul Johnson, lecture and poetry reading, April 6, 2016.
African American Studies Film Series, organizer, 2015–2017.
Teach-In on Police Brutality, organizer/moderator/panelist, 2015.
REFERENCES
Edward Baptist, Cornell University
Department of History, 450 McGraw Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: (607) 255-1881, Email: [email protected]
Judith Byfield, Cornell University
Department of History, 450 McGraw Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: (607) 254-5334, Email: [email protected]
Jon Hale, College of Charleston
Department of Teacher Education, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424
Phone: (843) 953-6345, Email: [email protected]
Kenneth A. McClane, Cornell University
Department of English, 278 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: (607) 255-9314, Email: [email protected]
Russell J. Rickford, Cornell University
Department of History, 450 McGraw Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: (607) 255-4752, Email: [email protected]
Nick Salvatore, Cornell University
School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 369 Ives Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: (607) 255-2240, Email: [email protected]
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