What's New in the Oxford African American Studies Center

What's New: February 2013

For the February 2013 update, the editors of the Oxford African American Studies Center have added new and updated content, including new articles and primary source documents, as well as a brand new lesson plan and a guide for teachers to the Common Core Standards. The previous update last fall featured a substantial amount of new African content, including the entire contents of the Dictionary of African Biography and The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought. To aid in searching, all pages now feature a functionality allowing users to search African American studies, Africa and Diaspora studies, or both.

25 new primary source documents featuring legal documents have been added to the site, including Excerpts from a Slave Petition to Governor Thomas Gage (1774), Excerpts from the Virginia Black Codes (1866), Petition for a Government Pension by Harriet Tubman (1898), and the Testimony of Maria Carter before the Joint Congressional Committee on the Ku Klux Klan (1871). Please see below for the full list of newly added primary source documents.

This update also includes highlights from the African American National Biography project, including biographies of Erykah Badu, Ben Jealous, Donald Cortez Cornelius, and John Burr. Biographies from the African American National Biography project are continually updated, keeping the content within the Oxford African American Studies Center accurate.

For every update in 2013, Oxford African American Studies Center will collect a new series of articles based around a particular theme. This update, edited by Jeannette Brown, sees the addition of new scholarly articles on African American Women Chemists. New articles feature Lilia Ann Abron, Angie Turner King, Gladys W. Royal, and Josephine Silone Yates. The full list is below.

A new lesson plan by Pamela Felder has been added to the Learning Center, discussing teaching diversity through film. In this lesson, students will explore the concepts of diversity and racial awareness through the HBO film Something the Lord Made. Another resource for teachers has also been addded exploring the Common Core Standards, which emphasize critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills. In this guide, Sarah Thomson provides her fellow history teachers with examples of how resources from the Oxford African American Studies Center can be used to create lesson plans that align with the new Common Core Standards.

Primary Source Documents Added in February 2013

African American Women Chemists: Table of Contents

Abron, Lilia Ann
Anderson, Gloria Long
Ball, Alice Augusta
Brown, Jeannette Elizabeth
Daly, Marie Maynard
Edwards, Cecile Hoover
Harris, Betty Wright
Hill, Mary Elliott
Hopkins, Esther A. H
Johnson, Allene
Jordan, Lynda Marie
Kelly, Sinah Estelle
King, Angie Turner
King, Reatha Clark
Lawson, Katheryn Emanuel
Lynk, Beebe Steven
Meade-Tollin, Linda C.
Patrick, Jennie
Prothro, Johnnie Hines Watts
Robeson, Eslanda Goode
Royal, Gladys W.
Schiesler, Mary Antoinette
Shavers, Cheryl L.
Tolbert, Margaret Ellen Mayo
Torrey, Rubye Prigmore
Yates, Josephine Silone

See Previous Updates

Oxford Index Underbar

The Oxford African American Studies Center now features the Oxford Index underbar, a tool that produces content recommendations in response to your search. So if you are searching "slavery" on African American Studies Center, the underbar will draw from a variety of Oxford resources to give you a selection of relevant works.

Click on the arrows located at the bottom of your browser to expand the underbar and see how it can enhance your search experience.

For more information about the Oxford Index watch our video or go to the Oxford Index website.

Focus On

In addition to our ongoing editorial update program, the Oxford African American Studies Center's editors commission and publish bi–monthly a publicly-available Focus On feature, designed to provide insights into topics of current and historical relevance.

This month's Focus On features Black Appalachia by Althea Webb.

Read this month's Focus On .

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