Renee Romano

Robert S. Danforth Professor of History Renee Romano is quoted at length in a long-form article on the return of "patriotic" history in the United States and Europe, published in the Spanish magazine CTXT. The article is authored by Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber.

Renee Romano, the Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and Professor of Comparative American and Africana Studies, published the chapter, “The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality” in the new collection, Heterosexual Histories (New York University Press, 2021), edited by Michele Mitchell and Rebecca Davis. She recently spoke at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas about the musical Hamilton, and gave the Harrison Lecture at the University of Western Kentucky on the topic, “Can the Past Save Us?: The Role of History in the Struggle for Racial Justice and Multiracial Democracy.”

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and co-editor of the collection, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Remaking America's Past, was quoted in articles in Time and the Wall Street Journal in advance of the Hamilton film premiere on Disney Plus.
 

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, presented on the panel, "Historicizing Heterosexuality" at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, held January 3-6, 2020, in New York City. The roundtable featured essays that will be published in the forthcoming volume, Heterosexual Histories. Romano spoke about her contribution to the volume, titled "The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality."

Robert S. Danforth Professor of History Renee Romano gave two presentations in January related to her new edited collection, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America's Past. On January 14, she participated in a panel on "The Legacy of Hamilton" sponsored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and held at the Hyundai Room at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. On January 27, she spoke on "The Hamilton Phenomenon: How a Blockbuster Musical is Reenergizing American History" at the Dunham Tavern Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth professor of history and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, has an article in the September 2018 volume of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, a special volume on the theme of Black Marriage. Her article, “Something Old, Something New: Black Women, Interracial Dating, and the Black Marriage, Crisis,” explores the arguments and viewpoints of a vocal group of black women who promote interracial dating and marriage in blogs, books, and internet advocacy sites.

Renee Romano, the Robert S. Danforth Professor of history, gave interviews and presentations about her new co-edited collection, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past. The book explores the musical’s historical accuracy, whether it’s revolutionary, and why it has been so incredibly popular. Romano did an interview about Hamilton for WCPN Ideastream’s The Sound of Applause on July 16, a day before the touring show of Hamilton opened in Cleveland. The collection has been featured in stories on Smithsonian.com and in the podcast, In the Past Lane. Romano and several of the volume’s contributors conducted a panel discussion at the Society of Cincinnati in Washington, D.C. on August 2, 2018.

Robert S. Danforth Professor of History Renee Romano’s editorial, “The Trauma of Internment,” appeared in the June 25, 2018 Washington Post. The editorial compares the impact of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans to the practice of separating migrant families at the U.S. border. Romano recounts the story of Alice, a Japanese-American teenager whose parents were arrested after Pearl Harbor, who is still now affected by the legacy of her separation from them and her imprisonment in the Jerome incarceration camp. Romano learned about Alice’s story while working on “Courage and Compassion,” a public history exhibit that focused on the Japanese American World War II experience and the stories of Japanese American students who studied at Oberlin during the war.

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth professor of history and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, has been appointed a distinguished lecturer by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The OAH distinguished lecturer program operates as a speakers bureau dedicated to American history.

Renee Romano, professor of history, comparative American studies, and Africana studies, was featured in an interview on the National Public Radio program The Takeaway on Monday, February 22. In the interview, Romano discussed ongoing battles over how the past should be remembered and what should be done with memorials and monuments to controversial figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Robert E. Lee. Visit this webpage to listen to the interview.

Renee Romano, professor and chair of history and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, delivered the 14th Annual American Studies Lecture at the University of Leicester in Leicester, England, on October 19. The title of her lecture was “‘The Great Force of History’: Collective Memory, White Innocence, and Making Black Lives Matter."

Renee Romano, professor of history, comparative American studies, and Africana studies, gave the opening plenary address at the Southern Association of Women Historians Conference, which was held in Charleston, South Carolina, in June. Her address, “The Limits of Commemoration: Civil Rights Memory and the Enduring Challenge of Innocence,” explored the seeming disjuncture between the extensive commemoration of the civil rights movement and our contemporary moment of pervasive inequality and racial violence.

The article "Beyond 'Self-Congratulatory Celebration': Complicating Civil Rights Anniversaries" by Renee Romano, Professor of History, Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies, appears in the November 2014 issue of the American Historian, the new magazine of the Organization of American Historians. Romano discussed Ferguson and the Eric Garner cases on the NPR program the Takeaway December 5. She was also quoted in a December 2 New York Times article about the "Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations" oral history project at the Brooklyn Historical Society, for which she serves as a consultant.

Renee Romano, professor of history, comparative American studies, and africana studies, has published a new book with Harvard University Press. “Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America's Civil Rights Murders” examines the phenomenon of the reopening and contemporary prosecutions of civil rights era killings.

In the 1950s and 1960s, few whites who turned to violence to try to impede the struggle for black civil rights were even charged with the murders they committed in the effort to uphold white supremacy. But in recent decades, state and federal authorities—often facing intense lobbying from families of victims—have reopened cold cases and tried now-elderly men in many of the most infamous racially motivated murders of the civil rights era. Drawing on sources ranging from trial transcripts to made-for-TV movies, Romano explores the political pressures and cultural developments that drove the legal system to revisit these decades-old murders, what happened in the courtroom when cases came before a jury, how trials have been represented in popular culture, and how different groups—from progressive activists to conservative politicians—have sought to use contemporary prosecutions to further their political agendas.

In addition, she recently gave a talk about the book at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, as well as giving a paper entitled “Historical Memory and the Contemporary Prosecution of Civil Rights-Era Crimes” at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Professor of History, Comparative American Studies, and Africana Studies Renee Romano spoke with host John Hockenberry about her new book, Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America's Civil Rights Murders (Harvard University Press) on the National Public Radio program The Takeaway on Wednesday, October 15. Racial Reckoning explores the reopenings and recent prosecutions of unresolved murder cases from the civil rights era, such as the 1963 Birmingham church bombing and the 1964 murders of Freedom Summer activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. On The Takeaway, Romano discussed what these murders reveal about America's racial past and what the contemporary trials illustrate about racial politics today.