Dr. Jones—associate professor, Institute for Ethnic Studies and Department of History
What is your area of specialization?
US History, African-American Studies, and Pre-colonial Africa
Why did you choose this field?
As an undergraduate history major, I wanted to connect with my own personal history and the history of people of African descent in the United States, as well as the importance of African history to situating histories of black folks in the Diaspora.
What is your favorite course to teach?
History of African American Women because I get to teach a vast time period (1600 to present) and use a variety of primary sources and scholarly secondary texts authored by black women. While I do not use black women scholars exclusively, it is important that 95% of the course materials I use were generated by black women themselves--the subject of the students' scholarly inquiry.
What are you currently researching?
I am writing my book, America in Africa: U.S. Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1821-1919, which examines US-African affairs from the colonization of Liberia to the end of World War I, demonstrating the shift from an American focus on the slavery question—the abolition of slavery and the suppression of transatlantic slave trade—to the African Question—a set of political discourses about the place of Africa in the world from Western perspectives. American policymakers debated Africa’s importance to the white “family of nations” once the slave trade finally ended? The book argues that this transformation links inextricably to the histories of US Empire, American racial ideologies (especially the proverbial Negro Question, which in its various permutations framed African Americans as a problem in US society and the body politic), and inter-imperial relations. Attending to the interplay between statecraft and racecraft, the book explores how US desires to assert itself on the international stage—diplomatically, economically, and culturally—drove American interests in Africa.
What professional organization are you affiliated with?
American Studies Association, Organization of American Historians, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American Historical Association, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I am involved in activism to my membership and leadership in the Lincoln Branch of the NAACP, of which I am Immediate Past-President. I am also President of the Lincoln Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated--a historical black sorority committed to social action and activism with a primary focus on the black community.
