[It’s been a while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure of checking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlight recent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]
One of the best things about my more than five years collecting and sharing public scholarship through my #ScholarSunday threads (every one of which is available in that Google Doc) has been the chance to connect to voices and work that’s not traditionally academic, and that reminds us that “academic” is only one of many frames or starting points for scholarship. Exemplifying that idea is Arianne Edmonds’s We Now Belong to Ourselves: J.L. Edmonds, The Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America (2025), a book written by its main subject’s great-great granddaughter which features personal narratives of her own identity, family story, and journey through the archives but also offers an analytical and profoundly public scholarly lens on what this early 20th century Black journalist reveals about his own time period and our own alike. In this Thanksgiving post from last year, I highlighted how a groundbreaking work of experimental narrative history helped inspire my podcast and my own continued evolution as a public scholar, and Edmonds’s equally groundbreaking book is sure to do the same as I move forward with that work.
Next recent read tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Recent reads you’d share?
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