Anti-Asian sentiment and plantation workers. The Jim Crow South and KKK members possessed by demons.
These diverse topics are fueling the anti-racist research and writing being done by UConn History Professors, Jason Chang and Dexter Gabriel. As part of a new series examining emerging research areas, UConn Today spoke with Professors Chang and Gabriel, along with their colleague in UConn’s Human Development and Family Studies department Jolaade Kalinowski, about their exciting work.
For Professor Chang, his research is pushing people to reconsider ideas of plantation workers by focusing on Asian tobacco laborers working in New England in the 1940s and 1980s. With Professor Gabriel, it is his acclaimed 2020 novella, Ring Shout, which analyzes historical topics but also delves into body horror and produces, as one reviewer for National Public Radio wrote, “images and beasts Guillermo del Toro would fall all over himself to help create on screen.”
For more about the exciting works of Professors Chang and Gabriel, as well as Professor Kalinowski, please check out the UConn Today article, “The Research of Difference: How UConn Researchers are Tackling Anti-Racism.”