2001 Conference

Theorizing Black Communities: New Frontiers in the Study of African-American Politics

Memorial Art Gallery, The University of Rochester East Parlor, Cutler Union May 5-6, 2001

Organized by Cathy Cohen of Yale University and Fredrick Harris of the University of Rochester

Session I: Religion, Culture and Memory

Barbara Savage, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania “Black Religion and Black Social Science in the Interwar Years”

Richard Iton, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto “Politics, Popular Culture, and African-American Exceptionalism”

Fredrick Harris, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester “ ‘It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them’: Collective Memory and Collective Action during the Civil Rights Movement”

Session II: Dynamics of Activism

Matthew Countryman, Department of History, University of Michigan “Towards a Social Movement Analysis of Black Power: Protest Strategy, Community Organizing, and Black Nationalism in Philadelphia during the 1960s”

Rhonda Williams, Department of History, Case-Western Reserve University “The Confluence of Identities: Public Housing and Welfare Rights Organizing in Baltimore”

Andrea Simpson, Department of Political Science, University of Washington “Linked and Fettered: Women in the Environmental Justice Movement”

Session III: Networks, Capital, and Opportunities

Brian McKenzie, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan “Political Communication Networks, Social Capital, and African-American Political Behavior”

Prudence L. Carter, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University “Black Cultural Capital and the Conflict of Schooling for African-American Youth: Extending a Sociological Concept”

Todd Shaw, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign

Session IV: The Politics of Black Identities

Ruel Rogers, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University “Black Like Who? Afro-Caribbean Immigrants, African Americans and the Politics of Incorporation”

John L. Jackson, Jr., Harvard Society of Fellows “Black on Both Sides: The Integrated Significance of Race and Class in Contemporary Black America”

Belinda Robnett, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine “Our Struggle for Unity: African Americans in the Age of Identity Politics”

Session V: Blacks and Political Representation

Claudine Gay, Department of Political Science, Stanford University “The Impact of Black Congressional Representation on Political Attitudes”

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester “Imperfect Reflections: Representing Black Subjective and Objective Interest in Congress”

J. Phillip Thompson, Department of Political Science, Columbia University “Has Liberalism Lost Its Mind?: Race and Local Democracy”