Faculty
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Theresa Runstedtler |
A former professional dancer/actress from Canada, Theresa Runstedtler chose to shift her passion for popular culture from the studio and stage to the classroom. Her book, Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line, is the first in-depth study of Johnson’s worldwide legacy as an early-twentieth-century black sporting hero and anticolonial icon in places as far-flung as Sydney, London, Cape Town, Paris, Havana, and Mexico City. Prof. Runstedtler’s scholarly publications appear in Canadian Issues (Fall 2005), In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), the Encyclopedia of World History, the Radical History Review (Winter 2009), and the Journal of World History (December 2010). Her research interests include the intersection of race, gender, and resistance in popular culture, black transnationalism and the history of the African diaspora, imperialism and globalization, comparative ethnic studies, European race relations, and black Canada. She teaches courses on race and popular culture, African American studies, U.S. Imperialism, and World history. She is also a periodic contributor to the goodmenproject.com and the newblackman.blogspot.com. For more information, please visit her personal blog at www.theresarunstedtler.com.
Education
PhD in African American Studies and History, Yale University, 2007
BA (summa cum laude) in History and English Literature, York University (Toronto), 1998
Areas of Specialization
U.S. Cultural and Social History, Reconstruction to the Present
Race, Popular Culture, and the Media
African American and African Diaspora Studies
U.S. Transnational/Imperial History
U.S. Racial and Ethnic Formations
Race and Globalization
European Race Relations
Recent Publications
Book
Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line (University of California Press, forthcoming 2012)
Articles
"In Sports the Best Man Wins: How Joe Louis Whupped Jim Crow," in Amy Bass, ed., In the Game: Race, Identity and Sports in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. http://www.amazon.com/pd/0520271602
(A reprint of this essay also appears in Sport in America: From Colonial Leisure to Celebrity Figures and Globalization, Volume II, ed. David K. Wiggins, 2009.)
"'Caught between the devil and the deep white sea': Black Canada's Case of Diasporic Dys-funk-tion." Canadian Issues (Fall 2005).
Reviews and Entries
Review of Battling Siki: A Tale of Ring Fixes, Race, and Murder in the 1920s for American Studies (2009).
“Muscular Christianity,” Encyclopedia of World History, ABC-CLIO, 2006.
Under Review
“The New Negro’s Brown Brother: Black American and Filipino Boxers and the ‘Rising Tide of Color’,” in eds. Davarian Baldwin and Minkah Makalani. Escape from New York!: The ‘Harlem Renaissance’ Reconsidered
Current Research Projects
“The McAdoos and the Global Imagination of Minstrelsy,” (Research project in-progress).
“African American Internationalism, 1850-1935,” (Research project in-progress)
“Jim Crow, John Bull, and the Black Atlantic: Educational Cooperation and Imperial Management in the 1920s,” (Article in-progress)
Frequently Taught Courses
Undergraduate
World Civilizations to 1500
Africa Diaspora: Social Evolution
Black Popular Culture
Graduate
Cultures of U.S. Empire
Race & Culture in America
Race, Gender & the Body
History from Bottom Up
Professional Activities
National Memberships
American Studies Association
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
UB Service
Co-convener, Buffalo Seminar on Racial Justice, a Working Group of the Baldy Center for Social Policy
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Lead organizer, Thinking Beyond the Nation-State, Baldy Center Symposium (Fall 2009)
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Co-organizer, Building Connections: U.S.-Canadian Symposium on Race, University of Toronto (Spring 2008)
American Studies Department Graduate Committee
Chair, American Studies Department Web and Print Publicity Committee
African & African American Studies Department Advisory Council
Awards and Grants
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania (2011-2012)
UB Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship (Fall 2008)
Nominated for the Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize of the Society of American Historians (2008)
Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize for best Yale dissertation on African American culture (2008)
Leylan Fellowship for Dissertation Writing (2006-2007)
Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Doctoral Fellowship (2004-2006)
Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Dissertation Research Fellowship (2004-2005)
Organization of American Historians, La Pietra Fellowship for Transnational History (2005), Merrill Travel Grant (2005)
Gilder Lehrman Institute, Research Fellowship (2005)
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Dissertation Research Fellowship (2004)
Yale Beinecke Library, Research Fellowship (2004)