In the Shadow of Charleston: Reflections on Race, Racism and Racial Violence

Keisha Blain is co-editor of The Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence, a newly published overview of race relations, racial violence, and civil rights activism in the United States and other parts of the world. The collection was designed to provide both historical and contemporary contexts for the 2015 shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine people. Blain is a visiting research scholar in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and is on the faculty at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Department of History. Her interdisciplinary work centers on 20th-century United States history, African American history, the modern African diaspora, and women’s and gender studies.