2010 was an important year for scholarship documenting the history of the carceral state. In January, legal scholar Michelle Alexander […]
Suffragette, T-Shirtgate, and a Taylor Swift Tweet: Breaking Down the Historical Problem of White Lady Feminism
Can rich, white ladies be effective feminists? In the court of public opinion these days, it seems the answer is […]
Jessie Mitchell’s Mother
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read […]
Surviving While Black in America: A Review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me
One of the products of Americans’ growing consciousness around racism and the police killings of African Americans is the conversation […]
Teaching Sexuality, Gender, and Race in Middle School
“So what do you do?” We all have asked this familiar question while making small talk at a BBQ, a […]
Police Brutality, Mental Illness, and Race in the Age of Mass Incarceration
On November 9, 2014, two Ann Arbor police officers shot and killed Aura Rosser, a 40-year-old black woman, after responding […]
I Was a Bystander in a Police Shooting: What It Taught Me about Police Violence, Memory, and Public Trust
I was returning from a productive, fun academic conference in Tampa, Florida last March, getting in on a 7:35 flight […]
Clio Reads: A Review of Feminism Unfinished
In Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements, historians Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry […]
Adventures in the Archives: The First Time
The possibility of having an “adventure in the archives” always seemed a bit far-fetched. My perceptions of academia, particularly as […]
“This is our Freedom Summer”: My Reflections on #FergusonOctober
By Austin McCoy
My decision to participate in Ferguson October was spur of the moment. I did not plan to attend, but my partner and her roommate convinced me to go. My interconnected multiple selves — black man, job-seeking graduate student, and activist committed to social justice — waged a battle for my conscience and time. My multiple deadlines and obligations as a graduate student made such a trip inconvenient. Yet, I recalled my reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict. I remembered crying to express my helplessness and grief. I told myself that night, I would not be caught on the sidelines in the fight for racial justice again. I promised that I would do anything in my power to be present the next time, because, unfortunately, I knew there would be a next time.
