My first book, Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), was released as an audiobook a week ago. The narrator is New York actor and producer Peter Lerman. Blackout chronicles Jackie Robinson’s tremendous ordeal during the crucial spring training of 1946, a full year away from breaking major …

In the academic world of scholarship and creative activity, Dr. Katherine V. Wills (aka Katerina Tsiopos) is both a scholar and poet. Professor of English and founding Director of the English program at IUPUC, she had two of her poems published as part of the INverse Poetry Archive. Her poems depict Indiana sporting life and …

Dr. Paul Mullins recently published his new book, Revolting Things: An Archeology of Shameful Histories and Repulsive Realities with the University Press of Florida. Overview In this book, Paul Mullins examines a wide variety of material objects and landscapes that induce anxiety, provoke unpleasantness, or simply revolt us. Bringing archaeological insight to subjects that are …

Dr. Obioma G. Nnaemeka is the co-editor of a new book titled, Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Black World Literature and Film.   Book Description: This book investigates how the intersection between gendered violence and human rights is depicted and engaged with in Africana literature and films. The rich and multifarious range of film …

One of the earliest sources of humanity’s religious impulse was severe weather, which ancient peoples attributed to the wrath of storm gods. Enlightenment thinkers derided such beliefs as superstition and predicted they would pass away as humans became more scientifically and theologically sophisticated. But in America, scientific and theological hubris came face-to-face with the tornado, …

Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? …

Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality Overview Contextualizes spiritual commodities, entrepreneurs, and consumers in the context of neoliberal capitalism Offers a clear and innovative account of cultural appropriation in some of the largest spiritual industries, including yoga Provides the reader with a lens through which to understand the complex relationship between capitalism, neoliberalism, …

by Elizabeth Nelson and Emily Beckman Widely remembered as sites of abuse, isolation, and neglect, many state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the disabled were shuttered across the United States in the late 20th century. Indiana’s Central State Hospital (1848-1994) came to a particularly tragic end, after a series of preventable patient deaths in the …

The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom Overview The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom examines the movements led by Father Divine, Charles Mason, and Albert Cleage (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) as alternative Christian movements in the middle of the twentieth …