2015 – 2016 Personally Speaking Series

From Mexico to Harlem, from white liberal anti-racism to campaign fund-raising, four UNC Charlotte authors led attendees on intriguing intellectual journeys during UNC Charlotte’s 2015-2016 Personally Speaking series.

The 2015-2016 Series Included:

Jürgen Buchenau, Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century (Duke University Press) Sept. 1, 2015

Buchenau is a professor and chair of the History Department in UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. HIs concise historical analysis of the Mexican Revolution explores the revolution’s causes, dynamics, consequences, and legacies. Its varied perspectives include those of campesinos and workers; politicians, artists, intellectuals and students; women and men; the well heeled, the dispossessed, and the multitude in the middle. In the process, the book engages major questions about the revolution: How did the revolutionary process and its aftermath modernize the nation’s economy and political system and transform the lives of ordinary Mexicans?

Shannon Sullivan, Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism (SUNY Press) Nov. 10, 2015

Sullivan is chair of the Department of Philosophy and professor of philosophy and health psychology in UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Good White People identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that Sullivan sums up as “white middle-class goodness,” an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege. Good White People won an award for Outstanding Academic Titles reviewed by CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries during the previous calendar year. It also was named a Ms. Magazine “Must-Read Book of 2014.”

Jeffrey B. Leak, Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas (University of Georgia Press) Feb. 15, 2016

Leak is a professor of English and president of the University faculty. Henry Dumas (1934-1968) is a literary mystery. A writer associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, he held much promise until a rookie transit cop took his life on a subway platform in Harlem. Leak’s biography of Dumas takes us from his origins in Sweet Home, Arkansas, to his intriguing literary and cultural experiences, to the posthumous publication of his work. The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc., gave Visible Man its annual best Nonfiction award for 2014. It also won an award for Outstanding Academic Titles reviewed by CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries during the previous calendar year.

Eric S. Heberlig, Congressional Parties, Institutional Ambition and the Financing of Majority Control (The University of Michigan Press) Mar. 10, 2017

Heberlig is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Close competition for majority party control of the U.S. House of Representatives has transformed congressional parties from legislative coalitions into partisan fundraising machines. With the need for ever-increasing sums of money to fuel the permanent campaign for majority control of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats have made large donations to their parties and their candidates mandatory for members who seek to advance in Congress. The book won The LBJ Foundation’s 26th D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book about Congress in 2014.