Erika Renee Williams (Author)

State Univ of New York, 2022

Tales from Du Bois brings together critical race theory, queer studies, philosophy, and genre theory to offer an illuminating new comprehensive study of W. E. B. Du Bois’s fiction from 1903–1928. Erika Renée Williams begins by revisiting Du Bois’s tale of being rebuffed by a white female classmate in The Souls of Black Folk, identifying it as a failure of what she calls “cross-caste romance”—a sentimental, conjugal, or erotic relation projected across lines of cultural difference. In Du Bois’s text, this failure figures as the cause of double consciousness, the experience of looking at oneself through the eyes of others. Far from being unique to Souls, the trope of cross-caste romance, Williams argues, structures much of Du Bois’s literary oeuvre. With it, Du Bois queries romance’s capacity to ground nationalism, on the one hand, and to foment queer forms of Afro-Diasporic reclamation and kinship, on the other. Beautifully written and deftly argued, Tales from Du Bois analyzes familiar works like Souls and Dark Princess alongside neglected short fiction to make a case for the value of Du Bois’s literary writing and its centrality to his thought more broadly.

David G. Embrick (Editor), Talmadge J. Wright (Editor), Andras Lukacs (Editor)

Lexington Books, 2012

While many books and articles are emerging on the new area of game studies and the application of computer games to learning, therapeutic, military and entertainment environments, few have attempted to contextualize the importance of virtual play within a broader social, cultural and political environment that raises the question of the significance of work, play, power and inequalities in the modern world. Many studies tend to concentrate on the content of virtual games, but few have questioned how power is produced or reproduced by publishers, gamers or even social media; how social exclusion (e.g., race, class, gender, etc.) in the virtual environments are reproduced from the real world; and how actors are able to use new media to transcend their fears, anxieties, prejudices and assumptions. The articles presented by the contributors in this volume represent cutting-edge research in the area of critical game play with the hope to draw attention to the need for more studies that are both sociological and critical.

David G. Embrick (Editor), Cameron D. Lippard (Editor), J. Scott Carter (Editor), Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Foreword)

University of Washington Press, 2020

The standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, the rise of white identity activists on college campuses, and the viral growth of white nationalist videos on YouTube vividly illustrate the resurgence of white supremacy and overt racism in the United States. White resistance to racial equality can be subtle as well—like art museums that enforce their boundaries as elite white spaces, “right on crime” policies that impose new modes of surveillance and punishment for people of color, and environmental groups whose work reinforces settler colonial norms.

In this incisive volume, twenty-four leading sociologists assess contemporary shifts in white attitudes about racial justice in the US. Using case studies, they investigate the entrenchment of white privilege in institutions, new twists in anti-equality ideologies, and “whitelash” in the actions of social movements. Their examinations of new manifestations of racist aggression help make sense of the larger forces that underpin enduring racial inequalities and how they reinvent themselves for each new generation.

David G. Embrick (Editor)

Cognella Academic Pub, 2013

While standard sociology textbooks often provide only brief overviews of the field of sociology, the anthology Sociology and the Global Society: Power, Privilege and Perspectives allows professors and students alike to spend more time addressing institutional and systemic inequalities, most notably issues of race, class, and gender. The book also examines globalization and its sociological effects.

After an introduction to the nature of sociology, the five sections of the book address the ways in which sociologists view the world, the ways culture impacts perspective, persistent social inequalities, and the sociology of development and globalization. The final section presents suggestions and solutions that can be used in dealing with systemic inequality.

The text exposes students to both classic sociological works, and the freshest contemporary research on topics ranging from media to education to the prison industrial complex through peer-reviewed research articles by notable scholars in the field.

Sociology and the Global Society is an ideal supplemental reader for introductory sociology courses, as well as classes focusing on social problems and inequality. It can also be used as a stand-alone textbook.