Adriane D. Lentz-Smith
Associate Professor in the Department of History
Overview
My interests lie in African American history, twentieth-century United States History, and the history of the US & the World.
My 2009 book, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, looks at the black freedom struggle in the World War I years, with a particular focus on manhood, citizenship, and global encounters. More recently, I have been at work on a book tentatively enttitled, "Afterlives: Sagon Penn, State Violence, and the Twilight of Civil Rights." The book looks at dramatic moments of violent encounter between African Americans and the police to explore the role of violence in sustaining and opposing white supremacy in the two decades following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
I am also interested in how African Americans engaged the world in the age of Cold War civil rights, and how their participation in the project of US state and empire set the horizons of their freedom struggles.
Selected Grants
Voting Rights in the United States awarded by National Endowment for the Humanities (Collaborator). 2017 to 2020
Challenging the Master Narrative of the Civil Rights Movement awarded by National Endowment for the Humanities (Scholar). 2017 to 2019
Lentz-Smith, A. Freedom Struggles: African Americans & World War I. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age. By Christopher Nichols.” Diplomatic History, 2014.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of Kimberley L. Phillips. War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the Military from World War II to Iraq.” Pacific Historical Review, Aug. 2013.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of Chad Williams. Torchbearerers of Democracy: African American Soldiers and the World War I Era.” North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 88, Oct. 2011.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Website Review of Politics of a Massacre: Discovering Wilmington 1898. Created and maintained by Eastern Carolina University.” Journal of American History, vol. 98, June 2011, pp. 309–309.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of Elizabeth Smith-Pryor. Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of White Supremacy.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 41, 2011, pp. 478–80.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of David Levering Lews, Michael Nash, and Daniel Leab, eds. Red Activists and Black Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, Nov. 2010, pp. 809–10.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of Janet Hudson. Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-Era South Carolina.” Journal of Southern History, vol. 76, Aug. 2010, pp. 770–71.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Book Review of Kate Dossett, Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism and Integration in the United States, 1896-1935.” North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 86, Jan. 2009.
Lentz-Smith, A. “"Charles Young," "Brownsville Riot," "W. E. B. Du Bois".” Encyclopedia of War and American Society, edited by Peter Karsten and et al, Sage Publications, 2005.
Lentz-Smith, A. “Indispensable histories.” Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 118, no. 2, June 2017. Scopus, doi:10.5403/oregonhistq.118.2.0264. Full Text
Lentz-Smith, A. “Passports to adventure: African Americans and the US security project.” American Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 537–43. Scopus, doi:10.1353/aq.2016.0049. Full Text
Lentz-Smith, A. “Reid’s Obama Blunder and What it Means.” History News Network, Jan. 2010.