H. C. C. Astwood: minister and missionary, diplomat and politician, enigma in the annals of US history. In Dominican Crossroads, Christina Cecelia Davidson explores Astwood’s extraordinary and complicated life and career. Born in 1844 in the British Caribbean, Astwood later moved to Reconstruction-era New Orleans, where he became a Republican activist and preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. In 1882 he became the first Black man named US consul to the Dominican Republic. Davidson tracks the challenges that Astwood faced as a Black politician in an era of rampant racism and ongoing cross-border debates over Black men’s capacity for citizenship. As a US representative and AME missionary, Astwood epitomized Black masculine respectability. But as Davidson shows, Astwood became a duplicitous, scheming figure who used deception and engaged in racist moral politics to command authority. His methods, Davidson demonstrates, show a bleaker side of Black international politics and illustrate the varied contours of transnational moral discourse as people of all colors vied for power during the ongoing debate over Black rights in Santo Domingo and beyond.

In-depth scholarship on the central artists, movements, and themes of Latin American art, from the Mexican revolution to the present A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art consists of over 30 never-before-published essays on the crucial historical and theoretical issues that have framed our understanding of art in Latin America. This book has a uniquely inclusive focus that includes both Spanish-speaking Caribbean and contemporary Latinx art in the United States. Influential critics of the 20th century are also covered, with an emphasis on their effect on the development of artistic movements. By providing in-depth explorations of central artists and issues, alongside cross-references to illustrations in major textbooks, this volume provides an excellent complement to wider surveys of Latin American and Latinx art. Readers will engage with the latest scholarship on each of five distinct historical periods, plus broader theoretical and historical trends that continue to influence how we understand Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American art today. The book’s areas of focus include: The development of avant-garde art in the urban centers of Latin America from 1910-1945 The rise of abstraction during the Cold War and the internationalization of Latin American art from 1945-1959 The influence of the political upheavals of the 1960s on art and art theory in Latin America The rise of conceptual art as a response to dictatorship and social violence in the 1970s and 1980s The contemporary era of neoliberalism and globalization in Latin American and Latino Art, 1990-2010 With its comprehensive approach and informative structure, A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art is an excellent resource for advanced students in Latin American culture and art. It is also a valuable reference for aspiring scholars in the field.

Seven hundred and fifty Jewish refugees fled Nazi Germany and founded the agricultural settlement of Sosúa in the Dominican Republic, then ruled by one of Latin America’s most repressive dictators, General Rafael Trujillo. In Tropical Zion, Allen Wells, a distinguished historian and the son of a Sosúa settler, tells the compelling story of General Trujillo, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and those fortunate pioneers who founded a successful employee-owned dairy cooperative on the north shore of the island. Why did a dictator admit these desperate refugees when so few nations would accept those fleeing fascism? Eager to mollify international critics after his army had massacred 15,000 unarmed Haitians, Trujillo sent representatives to Évian, France, in July, 1938 for a conference on refugees from Nazism. Proposed by FDR to deflect criticism from his administration’s restrictive immigration policies, the Évian Conference proved an abject failure. The Dominican Republic was the only nation that agreed to open its doors. Obsessed with stemming the tide of Haitian migration across his nation’s border, the opportunistic Trujillo sought to “whiten” the Dominican populace, welcoming Jewish refugees who were themselves subject to racist scorn in Europe. The Roosevelt administration sanctioned the Sosúa colony. Since the United States did not accept Jewish refugees in significant numbers, it encouraged Latin America to do so. That prodding, paired with FDR’s overriding preoccupation with fighting fascism, strengthened U.S. relations with Latin American dictatorships for decades to come. Meanwhile, as Jewish organizations worked to get Jews out of Europe, discussions about the fate of worldwide Jewry exposed fault lines between Zionists and Non-Zionists. Throughout his discussion of these broad dynamics, Wells weaves vivid narratives about the founding of Sosúa, the original settlers and their families, and the life of the unconventional beach-front colony.

This interdisciplinary book uses insights from Anthropology, Communication, Political Economy and Sociology to illuminate the ubiquitous presence of sports in politics, identity, business and education.

For nearly 50 years, a trend in African American literary history quarantined the Black Arts era of the 1960s and 1970s, separating it from the brilliantly creative and aesthetically experimental writing that took off in the 1980s. According to that history, the new literature discarded and distanced the anti-aesthetic posture of the Black Arts moment which emphasized racial tension, strident polemics, and romantic solidarity with the Black underclass. Yet according to the author, the six novels that John Edgar Wideman wrote from 1987 to 2017 complicate this reductive characterization of the black arts. They overflow with the criminal element: accused rapists and murderers; victims of unsanctioned lynching and sanctioned executions. As they engage in aesthetic experimentation, they express continuities with a spirit of restless invention and improvisation that derive from an ongoing engagement with African or Black Atlantic cosmology. They thus enable reassessment of the black arts legacy, entering the world on their own terms, producing their own reality, and working through the black arts notion of functional art. They are the result of a magical Black Atlantic craft that brings writing beyond written representation, transforming the novel itself into a functional tool – a charm -- of protection and healing.

Why should Christians care about the United Nation's Goals on poverty and hunger? Does not God want us to prosper? Will not the poor, the sick, the homeless just drag us down? Are we our brother's keeper? The author gives us compelling reasons why we must care, not because we are a Christian, Buddhist, or Moslem, but because we are human beings and we are inter-connected to the plight of every other human being.

comprehensive subject and name index.

AID TO HAITI: What Can Be Done? is a book of photographs of Haitian people and a listing of organizations trying to help them. Proceeds from the book are dedicated to furthering the work of helping the Haitian people.