BOOKS, ESSAYS & CONTRIBUTIONS
The Duchess Harris Collection from ABDO Publishing
NEW! Everyone's daily lives are affected by race and racism in America. Race and Policing examines recent incidents of minorities being mistreated or dying in police custody, delving into the historical institutions and laws that underpin today's system and exploring what police departments and the communities they serve are doing to improve communication and relationships.
Features include essential facts, a glossary, references, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Race and Policing
Dozens of African American women worked for NASA as expert mathematicians from the 1940s to the 1960s and almost no one knows about it. Segregated within NASA facilities in Hampton, Va., well-educated Black women used slide rules and pencils to do the calculations for flights by astronauts John Glenn and Alan Shepherd.
In Hidden Human Computers, Harris and Sue Bradford Edwards explore this history, part of the Hidden Heroes series from ABDO Publishing which will be available this coming Spring, and is written at a 6-12 grade reading level.
Hidden Human Computers
Black Lives Matter covers the shootings that touched off passionate protests, the work of activists to bring about a more just legal system, and the tensions in US society that these events have brought to light.
​
Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards.Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Black Lives Matter
Books
Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity
Racially Writing the Republic investigates the central role of race in the construction and transformation of American national identity from the Revolutionary War era to the height of the civil rights movement. Drawing on political theory, American studies, critical race theory, and gender studies, the contributors to this collection highlight the assumptions of white (and often male) supremacy underlying the thought and actions of major U.S. political and social leaders. At the same time, they examine how nonwhite writers and activists have struggled against racism and for the full realization of America’s political ideals. The essays are arranged chronologically by subject, and, with one exception, each essay is focused on a single figure, from George Washington to James Baldwin.
​
This book takes aim at a central dilemma of U.S. political history: how the promise of U.S. democracy – and of the “American dream” – has been integrally bound up with the ravages of American racism. We explore the gap between grand American ideals and the troubled American racial reality through the thorny efforts of two different groups of writer-activists to create American democracy and national identity: canonical thinkers and leaders, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Samuel Gompers, who joined exalted ideals with white racism, and lesser known race rebels – such as Paiute activist Sara Winnemucca, Mexican Texan Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan, and African American writer-activists Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, who envisioned variously an anti-racist, egalitarian republic. While the canonical thinkers are deeply associated with constitutive “American” ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy, the race rebels worked courageously to reshape the promise of America beyond the confines of its racism.
​
With regard to the tribunes of America’s white republic, we do not simply dismiss their contributions – such as Jefferson’s declaration that “all men are created equal” or Sanger’s advocacy of women’s liberation. Rather, we wish to show how their beneficial ideas can be realized only by racially re-writing the republic – that is, by overcoming its racially exclusionary character. Simultaneously, we look to a set of anti-racist race rebels who improvised audaciously on the salutary parts of the American dream while vigorously contesting its oppressive manifestations. As race rebels, these thinkers struggled for social justice from perspectives that were explicitly informed by their own subordinate racialized identities. And yet, their visions of a good society – their not-yet-visible republic – are, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous phrase, “deeply rooted in the American dream.”
Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book analyzes Black women’s involvement in American political life, focusing on what they did to gain political power between 1961 and 2001, and why, in many cases, they did not succeed. Harris demonstrates that Black women have tried to gain centrality through their participation in Presidential Commissions, Black feminist organizations, theatrical productions, film adaptations of literature, beauty pageants, electoral politics, and Presidential appointments.
Harris contends that ‘success’ in this area means that the feminist-identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas’s appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill; Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won re-election; Lani Gunier would have had a hearing; Dr. Joycelyn Elders would have maintained her post; and Congresswoman Barbara Lee wouldn’t have stood alone in her opposition to the Iraq war resolution.
Essays & Contributions
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Black Feminist Prison Politics, National Political Science Review, Volume 17:1 (2015)
The Feminist Wire (2014)
​
Co-editor with Susannah Bartlow and Stephanie Gilmore of the Beyond Critique forum, Introduction and Beyond the Beyond for The Feminist Wire (April 7-14, 2014)
​
Incarcerated Motherhood, Touro Law Center’s Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity Volume 6, Issue 1 (2012-2013)
​
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You: Race, Class, and Access t o Genetic Cancer Testing with Christine Ohenewah, The Feminist Wire (2013)
​
Your Feminism Ain’t Like Ours , Because We Are Raising Quvenzhané, The Feminist Wire (2013)
​
Civil Rights Law and The Valley Swim Club: “Trouble the Waters” in the Age of Obama (with Craig Green and Keesha Gaskins), William Mitchell Law Raza Journal (2012)
​
Kathryn Stockett Is Not My Sister and I Am Not Her Help, JENdA: A Journal of Culture of African Women Studies (2011)
I did not attend Wednesday’s movie release of The Help from DreamWorks Pictures, based on…
​
The Help Leaves Her Longing for a More Authentic Story, JENdA: A Journal of Culture of African Women Studies (2011)
I had said I would not see the movie, The Help. I made that decision…
​
Book Review: This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity, Journal of American History (2010)
This Violent Empire sheds important light on the dark historical schism between the aspirations of…
​
Orders Highlight Need for Diversity in Appointing Class Counsel, Litigation News (2010)
A federal district judge received considerable attention from litigators around the country as a result…
​
The State of Black Women in Politics Under the First Black President, The Scholar and Feminist Online Issue (2010)
It would be nice to think that Obama’s election was the positive end note to…
​
In-House Counsel’s Inactive Bar Status Causes Loss of Privilege, Litigation News (2010)
Ruling that a corporation did not take reasonable precautions to confirm in-house counsel’s authority to…
​
Opposing Party Ordered to Pay Expert Deposition Preparation Fees, Litigation News (2010)
The use of experts in litigation is common, and so are disputes over the payment…
​
“Clerk-Loaning” Program Sparks Ethical Debate, Litigation News (2009)
In today’s economic climate, the legal profession faces the same financial pressures all businesses do….
​
Courts Wrangle with Twittering by Jurors, Litigation News (2009)
The continuing improvement of search tools, proliferation of microblogging sites like Twitter, and increased use…
​
Computers to Replace Lawyers? Not Yet, Litigation News (2009)
Though “concept searching” may create efficiencies, developing the concept searches requires a team of individuals…
Review of Black Feminist Voices in Politics by Evelyn Simian, National Political Science Review (2007)
​
Review of Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 by Kimberly Springer, Journal of African American History (2006)
​
Negative Black American Stereotypes and Their Impact on Japanese Mindset and Behaviors, Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal (2002)
​
Review of Critical race feminism: A Reader edited by Adrien Katherine Wing, Women & Politics (2002)
​
Multicultural Feminism Transforming Democracy, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies (2002)
​
[Reprinted] Babylon is Burning, Or Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (with Adam J. Waterman), Visiones Contemporaneas De La Cultura Y La Literature Norteamericana En Los Sesenta Universidad de Sevilla(2002)
​
The American Health Insurance Landscape: From Self-Insurance to Subsidies, Rationing, and Turmoil (with R Geist), Minnesota Medicine: A Journal of Critical and Health Affairs (2002)
​
Medical Inflation: New systems for contolling it (with R Geist), Minnesota Physician: The Independent Medical Business Newspaper (2001)
​
Multicultural Feminism Transforming Democracy, Macalester International (2000)
​
Babylon is Burning, Or Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention, Journal of Intergroup Relations(2000)
​
The Problem of the 21st Century: The Problem of the Dollar Sign, Black Issues in Higher Education (2000)
​
All of Who I Am in the Same Place: The Combahee River Collective, Womanist Theory and Research (1999)
​
Expanding Women’s Opportunities: Black Participation on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Journal of Intergroup Relations(1998)
​
Analyzing Racial Justice and Social Law, Journal of Intergroup Relations (1997)
​
Colin Powell’s American Journey: Not to the Capitol, but to Capital, Journal of Intergroup Relations (1997)
​
Reclaiming Culture or Commodifying Contempt?, American Quarterly (1996)
Review essay of Kenneth Goings’, Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black collectible and American Stereotyping and…
​
More Than Memorabilia? Khaila as Jezebel, Manny, and Sapphire in Losing Isaiah, COLORS: Opinion & the Arts in Communities of Color (1995)
​
Book Review: Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins, Canon: The Journal of the Rocky Mountain American Studies Association (1994)