The Faculty-Graduate seminar is an intimate intellectual community that comes together to discuss work in progress around a common theme across a wide range of disciplines. Our goal is to establish a small but intellectually diverse and committed group of scholars who will attend all meetings and engage in sustained discourse during the year. Each meeting lasts one hour and twenty minutes followed by dinner. Given these goals and the limited meeting space, we will be accepting only twelve (12) graduate students into each semester’s seminar. We encourage graduate students to commit to both semesters and preference for spring registration will be given to students engaged in the fall seminar. Participation in the African American Studies’ Faculty-Graduate Seminar for one academic year or the equivalent (two semesters) will fulfill one of the requirements for the AAS Graduate Certificate

The Black 1980s: Promises of Inclusion, Perils of Access

From the end of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to the mid 1990s, Black life in the United States and beyond underwent profound political, social and economic changes.  These transformations have been buried under the language of “post-civil rights era”, telling us little of how that aftermath was experienced in Black communities and among Black people. It remains a period seemingly impervious to historical treatment and understanding. The purpose of our speaker series is to bring light to the tumultuous time of twilight of the twentieth century. Black political thought and struggle did not end with “the sixties” but it changed dramatically, often fractured along the lines of class and gender. The ‘War on Drugs’, demonization of single Black mothers, rising Black poverty and an incipient war on social welfare uneasily co-existed with a historic rise in Black political representation and the emergence of a small but significant Black elite. It was also a quizzical time in terms of the explosion of Black cultural production. Even as Black poor and working-class people were deeply reviled by those in power, Black culture dominated American society.  We seek to understand these developments, their contradictions, and the wide variety of responses they provoked. 

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Joshua Guild are the AY25 Fac-Grad Seminar Faculty Conveners.

Meet The Speaker

Marcus Lee is a social scientist and writer, with expertise in Black Studies. He earned a B.A. in Sociology at Morehouse College and a Ph.D. in Political Science, with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Chicago.

His research concerns 20th century black political history, social movements, black popular culture, and science and technology. At Princeton, he will pursue a book project that examines the material and discursive conditions under which black gay/lesbian groups attained political “visibility’ in the “post-civil rights era.” With particular attention to the early development of HIV/AIDS statistics, the advent of hand-held audiovisual technologies, and the institutionalization of civil rights history, the project details the political effects and historical significance of late 20th century efforts to specify and articulate black sexual difference. His second project will offer an account of the expansion of racialized vigilante violence through a comparative analysis of three cases: the multi-state diffusion of “Shoot First” legislation, the development of abortion bounties, and the promotion of concealed carry weapon insurance products.

Lee is the recipient of a number of awards, including the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Point Foundation Scholarship, the American Political Science Association Minority Fellowship, and the Predoctoral and Dissertation Fellowships through the Ford Foundation. His research has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Mays Foundation, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. He has published work in the Du Bois Review and The Atlantic.

In fall 2024, Lee will be teaching a course on black political history titled “Black Politics Since 1965.” During his time at Princeton, he also plans to teach a course on “20th Century Social Movements.”  He will join the faculty in the Department of African American Studies as an assistant professor in July 2025.