Mari N. Crabtree, Ph.D.

Mari N. Crabtree, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of African American Studies

  

Learn more about Dr. Crabtree

Dr. Crabtree’s approach to African American studies blends Black studies, cultural studies, and history, and her research and teaching interests are in theorizing African American trauma; guile and humor in the African American cultural tradition; mass incarceration and its roots; and the African American freedom struggle.
  • Education 

    Ph.D. Cornell University
    M.A. Cornell University
    A.B. Amherst College

     

  • Research Interests

    Mari N. Crabtree specializes in African American culture and history, in particular how the African American cultural tradition has shaped the Black freedom struggle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching, was published in 2022 by Yale University Press as part of the New Directions in Narrative History series. This monograph unearths how African Americans lived through and beyond traumatic memories of lynching in the mid-twentieth century US South. Drawing upon a wide range of narrative responses to lynching, this book develops a theory of African American trauma that uses the sensibility of the blues as its central metaphor. She also has written essays for Raritan, Rethinking History, Contemporaries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and an edited volume, Reconstruction beyond 150. Currently, she is working on a new book project that examines the pleasures and political utility of guile, deception, and humor in the African American cultural tradition titled Shuffling Like Uncle Tom, Thinking Like Nat Turner: Humor, Deception, and Irony in the African American Cultural Tradition.

     

  • Courses Taught

    Introduction to African American Studies
    Introduction to African American Music
    Mongrel America: Miscegenation, Passing, and the Myth of Racial Purity
    Remembering and Forgetting: Race, Violence, and American Cultural Memory
    Mass Incarceration and Its Roots
    The Life and Writings of James Baldwin
    Lynching in the American Imagination
    When Bruce Lee Meets Bruce Leroy: Afro-Asian Political and Cultural Connections
    Internship in African American Studies
    Capstone in African American Studies

     

  • Selected Publications 
    Books 
    My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
    Articles and Book Chapters

    “Lynching in the American Imagination: A Historiographical Reexamination.” In Reconstruction beyond 150: Reassessing the New Birth of Freedom, edited by Orville Vernon Burton and J. Brent Morris, 105–124. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2023. 

    “The Value of Integrating African American Archives into Undergraduate African American Studies Curricula.” In Ethnic Studies in Academic and Research Libraries, edited by Raymond Pun, Melissa Cardenas-Dow, and Kenya S. Flash, 27–42. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2021. [co-authored with Aaisha N. Haykal]  

    “The Ethics of Writing History in the Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching.” Rethinking History 24, no. 3–4 (2020): 351–367. doi:10.1080/13642529.2020.1846968. 

    “The Art and Politics of Subterfuge in African American Culture.” Raritan: A Quarterly Review 38, no. 1 (Summer 2018): 69−92. 

    Digital Publications

    “Desegregation at the College of Charleston,” Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston, July 2023. http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/desegregation-at-the-college.

    “When Academic Life Is a Horror Show: Mariama Diallo’s ‘Master’ Satirizes On-Campus Racism in Sharp but Uneven Strokes.” Chronicle of Higher Education (12 May 2022): https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-academic-life-is-a-horror-show. 

    “Stick to the Script?! No, Stick It to the Man!” Contemporaries (22 June 2021): https://post45.org/2021/06/stick-to-the-script-no-stick-it-to-the-man/.

     

  • Honors & Awards 

    Faculty Research Grant, College of Charleston (2022, 2015–2018)

    Visiting Research Scholar (Postdoctoral Research Fellowship), Princeton University, Department of African American Studies (2019–2020)

    Interdisciplinary Research Group, College of Charleston (2018–2019)

    ExCEL Faculty of the Year Award for the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs, College of Charleston (2016–2017)

    Pedagogy and Teaching Grant for New Course Development, College of Charleston (2016, 2015)

     

  • Press and Media

    “Black Pain, Resistance, and Lynching Memory: An Interview with Mari N. Crabtree.” By Menika Dirkson. Black Perspectives (blog). May 2 and 3,2023.  

    “My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching,” African American Studies, New Books Network Podcast, April 8, 2023, https://newbooksnetwork.com/my-soul-is-a-witness. 

    “Mari Crabtree on My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching,” Conversations in Atlantic Theory Podcast, episode 61, January 26, 2023, https://atlantictheory.org/e61/. 

    “Not Just in February: Black History Month Interview with Prof Mari Crabtree,” PhDivas Podcast, season 3, episode 18, February 27, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/phdivas/mari-crabtree. 

    “The Black and White Views of Charleston’s Racially Charged Murder Trials.” By Brandon E. Patterson. Mother Jones 1 December 2016. http://motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/charleston-trial-dylan-roof-walter-scott-michael-slager.