Adriane D. Lentz-Smith

Associate Professor in the Department of History

External address: 
320 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Internal office address: 
Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708-0719
Phone: 
(919) 684-2837
adriane.lentz-smith@duke.edu

Overview

My interests lie in African American history, twentieth-century United States History, and the history of the US & the World.

My 2009 book, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, looks at the black freedom struggle in the World War I years, with a particular focus on manhood, citizenship, and global encounters. More recently, I have been at work on a book tentatively enttitled, "The Laws Have Hurt Me: African Americans, State Violence, and the Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement." The book looks at dramatic moments of violent encounter between African Americans and the police to explore the role of violence in sustaining and opposing white supremacy in the two decades following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

I am also interested in how African Americans engaged the world in the age of Cold War civil rights, and how their participation in the project of US state and empire set the horizons of their freedom struggles.

Education & Training

  • Ph.D., Yale University 2005

Lentz-Smith, A. Freedom Struggles: African Americans & World War I. Harvard University Press, 2009. (Monograph)

Lentz-Smith, A. "Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age. By Christopher Nichols." Diplomatic History (2014).

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of Kimberley L. Phillips. War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the Military from World War II to Iraq." Pacific Historical Review (August 2013).

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of Chad Williams. Torchbearerers of Democracy: African American Soldiers and the World War I Era." North Carolina Historical Review 88 (October 2011).

Lentz-Smith, A. "Website Review of Politics of a Massacre: Discovering Wilmington 1898. Created and maintained by Eastern Carolina University." Journal of American History 98 (June 2011): 309-309.

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of Elizabeth Smith-Pryor. Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of White Supremacy." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41 (2011): 478-480.

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of David Levering Lews, Michael Nash, and Daniel Leab, eds. Red Activists and Black Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Movement." Journal of American Studies 44 (November 2010): 809-810.

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of Janet Hudson. Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-Era South Carolina." Journal of Southern History 76 (August 2010): 770-771.

Lentz-Smith, A. "Book Review of Kate Dossett, Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism and Integration in the United States, 1896-1935." North Carolina Historical Review 86 (January 2009).

Lentz-Smith, A. ""Charles Young," "Brownsville Riot," "W. E. B. Du Bois"." In Encyclopedia of War and American Society,edited by P Karsten and E al. Sage Publications, 2005.

Lentz-Smith, A. "Passports to adventure: African Americans and the US security project." American Quarterly 68, no. 3 (September 1, 2016): 537-543. (Review)

Lentz-Smith, A. "Reid’s Obama Blunder and What it Means." History News Network (January 2010).