Topnotch Tomes

WE ARE NOT SLAVES

BY ROBERT CHASE

Robert Chase, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History, recently won the H.L. Mitchell Award for Best Book on southern labor and the working class for the Southern Historical Association for We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC, 2020). The Mitchell Award cited We Are Not Slaves as a ‘distinguished book that incorporated southern prisons and prison labor into the carceral studies field to take up southern prison labor, profitability and state violence as a tool of internal economies and carceral discipline.’

AN UNEASY EMBRACE

BY SHOBANA SHANKAR

An Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India and the Spectre of Race (Hurst/Oxford, 2021), written by Shobana Shankar, a professor in the Department of History, was named a finalist late in 2022 for the International Studies Association’s Global Development Section book award. The book explores how Africans and Indians reconcile their often complicated relationships, focusing on the dynamic between them, as well as universal themes of race, religion and gender.

THE WALLS OF SANTIAGO

BY ERIC ZOLOV

Eric Zolov, a professor in the Department of History, recently published The Walls of Santiago: Social Revolution and Political Graphics in Contemporary Chile (Berghahn, 2022), co-written with Terri Gordon-Zolov. Their work explores the significance of the 2019 social uprising in Chile viewed through the lens of protest street graphics.

From October 2019 until March 2020, Chile was convulsed by protests and political upheaval, as what began as civil disobedience transformed into a vast resistance movement. Throughout, the authors note, the most striking aspects of the protests were the murals, graffiti, and other political graphics that became ubiquitous in Chilean cities.

The authors were in Santiago to witness and document the protests from their very beginning. The beautifully illustrated book contains more than 150 photographs taken throughout the protests.  

SISTER NOVELISTS

BY DEVONEY LOOSER

Devoney K. Looser, PhD ’93 has authored a biography, Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës (Bloomsbury Publishing).  The book was named one to watch on Apple’s list of “Most Anticipated Fall Books” in 2022 in non-fiction and received a starred review from Kirkus. 

In Sister Novelists, Looser tells the tale of Jane and Anna Maria Porter, contemporaries of Jane Austen, who were said to be brilliant, attractive, self-made single women of polite reputation who between them published 26 books and achieved global fame. Yet little is spoken about them today. Looser unveils their secrets and what caused their downfall, thanks in part to the sister’s extensive archive of correspondence and work that they left behind.