About

My primary research focuses on African American expression in the context of slavery and its aftermath. I have secondary interests in legal history, cultural theory, and popular music. My first book, Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery, a study of black vernacular expression and its entanglement with the law, was published by Harvard University Press in 2009. I’m currently working on two books: Fables of Moral Economy, a close analysis of African-derived global traditions engaged with problems of property and subsistence, and Fugitives, Contrabands, Spies, Servants & Laborers, an experiment in historiography that imagines the new social history of slavery from the standpoint of its source materials.