Nas at Lovebox: 20 years of Illmatic

To mark Black History Month, Nottingham MRes student Jasmine Gothelf (American & Canadian Studies) reviews a recent performance by the African American artist Nas in Britain, and discusses the ongoing political relevance of hip hop to contemporary African American life. Please join the American & Canadian Studies department for its Black History Events this month: …

People often think they know Martin Luther King Jr, but do they?

Look at the new statue in Washington, featured on the poster below. Its design was controversial because some felt it made King look too stern and forbidding a figure, but maybe it corrected a false perception of him and his non-violent philosophy as simply conciliatory and passive. The monument also casts an African American in …

Imagining silence: experiencing history as fiction

By Katie Hamilton, PhD student in the Department of American & Canadian Studies On first consideration, a reading and conversation with a novelist seems an incongruous way to celebrate Black History Month. It begs the question of what a contemporary novel can tell us about the history of the African diaspora that we don’t already …