I. Staley Prize in Anthropology--Eugene D. Genovese "Manchester Guardian"

Escaping slavery in the Americas, maroons made miracles in the mountains, summoned new societies in the swamps, and forged new freedoms in the forests. Maroon Comix is a fire on the mountain where maroon words and images meet to tell stories together. Stories of escape and homecoming, exile and belonging. Stories that converge on the summits of the human spirit, where the most dreadful degradation is overcome by the most daring dignity. Stories of the damned who consecrate their own salvation.

In Maroon Choreography fahima ife speculates on the long (im)material, ecological, and aesthetic afterlives of black fugitivity. In three long-form poems and a lyrical essay, they examine black fugitivity as an ongoing phenomenon we know little about beyond what history tells us. As both poet and scholar, ife unsettles the history and idea of black fugitivity, troubling senses of historic knowing while moving inside the continuing afterlives of those people who disappeared themselves into rural spaces beyond the reach of slavery. At the same time, they interrogate how writing itself can be a fugitive practice and a means to find a way out of ongoing containment, indebtedness, surveillance, and ecological ruin. Offering a philosophical performance in black study, ife prompts us to consider how we—in our study, in our mutual refusal, in our belatedness, in our habitual assemblage—linger beside the unknown. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Discusses the history and traditions of Texas A & M University.

A new history of post†‘Revolutionary Haiti, and the society that emerged in the aftermath of the world’s most successful slave revolution Haiti is widely recognized as the only state born out of a successful slave revolt, but the country’s early history remains scarcely understood. In this deeply researched and original volume, Johnhenry Gonzalez weaves a history of early independent Haiti focused on crop production, land reform, and the unauthorized rural settlements devised by former slaves of the colonial plantation system. Analyzing the country’s turbulent transition from the most profitable and exploitative slave colony of the eighteenth century to a relatively free society of small farmers, Gonzalez narrates the origins of institutions such as informal open-air marketplaces and rural agrarian compounds known as lakou. Drawing on seldom studied primary sources to contribute to a growing body of early Haitian scholarship, he argues that Haiti’s legacy of runaway communities and land conflict was as formative as the Haitian Revolution in developing the country’s characteristic agrarian, mercantile, and religious institutions.

During a lengthy incarceration spent mostly in solitary confinement, Russell Maroon Shoatz has developed into a prolific writer and powerful voice for the disenfranchised. This first published collection of his accumulated works showcases his sharp and profound understanding of the current historical moment, with clear proposals for how to move forward embracing new political concepts and practices. Informed by Shoatz's experience as a leader in the Black Liberation Movement in Philadelphia, the pieces in this book put forth his fresh and self-critical retelling of the black liberation struggle in the United States and provide cutting-edge analysis of the prison-industrial complex. Innovative and revolutionary on multiple levels, the essays also discuss such varied topics as eco-socialism, matriarchy and eco-feminism, food security, prefiguration and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Including new essays written expressly for this volume, Shoatz's unique perspective offers many practical and theoretical insights for today's movements for social change.