Podcast appearances and mentions of Maurice O Wallace

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr. with Dr. Maurice O. Wallace. Williams is Director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Wallace is Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995, and coeditor of Pictures of Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity. Williams and Wallace discuss his latest book King's Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Duke University Press, 2022) in which he explores the history of sound in the Black experience through an analysis of King's vibrato. In this text, Wallace conjoins history and critical theory to discuss the “modernist soundscapes” that shaped King's voice and expression. He further argues that King's vibrato was produced out of a series of elements including ecclesiastical architecture, instrumentation (the organ), the audience, song, and technology. For more about Wallace click here Maurice O. Wallace and to order his book click on this link King's Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Dr. Wallace's first thought, "When we close the book, that's when it gets real!" A description won't do it justice, just hit play and hear/see in new ways!

This week, we’re exploring another overlooked angle of antebellum American history: how photography transformed the abolitionist movement—and in particular, how a photograph of one seven-year-old girl was used to gain a white audience's sympathy. Jessie Morgan-Owens, a photographer and a historian, has written a book about that little girl, Mary Mildred Williams: Girl in Black and White, so named for the tones of daguerreotype, and of Mary herself—who looked white, though she was born into slavery. The story of how Senator Charles Sumner used Mary to advance his antislavery cause tells us a lot about the politics of the 19th century.Go beyond the episode:Jessie Morgan-Owens’s Girl in Black and WhiteRead Frederick Douglass’s speech, “Pictures and Progress,” delivered in Boston in 1861, and the introduction to Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Williams’s anthology of Douglass’s writing on photography (and if you’re feeling particularly brave, try parsing Douglass’s own manuscript at the Library of Congress)As the most photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass left behind a voluminous photographic record, collected in Picturing Frederick DouglassCheck out Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida for a French post-structuralist spin, or W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory for a contemporary take on visual representationSojourner Truth supported herself by selling cartes de visite, in which she’s pictured wearing an iconic white cap and shawl (which she probably knit herself, given that she spun 100 pounds of wool to buy her freedom)The Mirror of Race is an online collection of early photographs about race in America, including critical commentaryMorgan-Owens also edited the 2017 reissue of Mary Hayden Green Pike’s novel Ida May, about a girl whom Charles Sumner compared Mary Mildred WilliamsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play •

This week, we’re exploring another overlooked angle of antebellum American history: how photography transformed the abolitionist movement—and in particular, how a photograph of one seven-year-old girl was used to gain a white audience's sympathy. Jessie Morgan-Owens, a photographer and a historian, has written a book about that little girl, Mary Mildred Williams: Girl in Black and White, so named for the tones of daguerreotype, and of Mary herself—who looked white, though she was born into slavery. The story of how Senator Charles Sumner used Mary to advance his antislavery cause tells us a lot about the politics of the 19th century.Go beyond the episode:Jessie Morgan-Owens’s Girl in Black and WhiteRead Frederick Douglass’s speech, “Pictures and Progress,” delivered in Boston in 1861, and the introduction to Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Williams’s anthology of Douglass’s writing on photography (and if you’re feeling particularly brave, try parsing Douglass’s own manuscript at the Library of Congress)As the most photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass left behind a voluminous photographic record, collected in Picturing Frederick DouglassCheck out Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida for a French post-structuralist spin, or W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory for a contemporary take on visual representationSojourner Truth supported herself by selling cartes de visite, in which she’s pictured wearing an iconic white cap and shawl (which she probably knit herself, given that she spun 100 pounds of wool to buy her freedom)The Mirror of Race is an online collection of early photographs about race in America, including critical commentaryMorgan-Owens also edited the 2017 reissue of Mary Hayden Green Pike’s novel Ida May, about a girl whom Charles Sumner compared Mary Mildred WilliamsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play •