Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Houston Bound
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1975
WEBSITE: http://tyinasteptoe.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://history.arizona.edu/user/tyina-steptoe * https://history.arizona.edu/sites/history.arizona.edu/files/user-cvs/Steptoe%20CV%202017_0.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2015067880
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Steptoe, Tyina L., 1975-
Birth date: 19751215
Field of activity: United States--History--20th century Social history Race
Ethnicity
Fuller form of name
Tyina Leaneice
Affiliation: University of Arizona
Found in: Steptoe, Tyina L. Houston Bound, 2016: ECIP title page
(Tyina L. Steptoe) data view (Steptoe, Tyina Leaneice;
birth date December 15, 1975)
University of Arizona website, May 12, 2015: faculty
webpage (Tyina Steptoe; My work focuses on cultural and
social history of the 20th-century United States, and I
specialize in race, ethnicity, and gender. My current
book project examines how migration to Houston between
the 1920s and 1960s affected constructions of race)
http://history.arizona.edu/user/tyina-steptoe
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born 1975 in Houston, Texas.
EDUCATION:University of Texas at Austin, B.A., B.S., 1999; University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A., 2002, Ph.D., 2008.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. University of Arizona, associate professor of history, 2014—. Worked formerly as associate professor of American ethnic studies, University of Washington, 2009-14.
MEMBER:American Studies Association, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Organization of American Historians, Western History Association.
AWARDS:Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book of 2016, Urban History Association; 2017 W. Jackson Turrentine Book Prize, Western History Association; 2017 Julia Ideson Award, Friends of the Texas Room, all for Houston Bound. Recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Journal of African American History, Journal of the West, Oxford American, Houston Chronicle, Campaign for the American Reader, Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response, and the Oxford African American Studies Center.
SIDELIGHTS
Tyina L. Steptoe is a writer and associate professor of history at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She received her B.A. and B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before teaching at the University of Arizona, Steptoe was an assistant professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Steptoe’s work has been published in the Journal of African American History, the Journal of the West, Oxford American, and the Oxford African American Studies Center. Her research and teachings focus primarily on race, gender, and culture in the United States. Steptoe lives in Tucson, Arizona.
In Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City, Steptoe writes about the history of race, migration, and urban development in Houston. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and one of the most racially and ethnically diverse. Despite this, Julia Gunn in the Southern Historical Association wrote, the city often remains on the “periphery of histories of race, migration, and twentieth-century American urban development.” Steptoe attempts to remedy this misrepresentation with a comprehensive history of the city.
Steptoe begins by examining the ways in which migration influenced the culture and growth of Houston. She looks to the migration of black East Texans, Creoles, Tejanos, and Mexicans that occurred between World War I and the 1960s, describing the influences and connections between the groups.
Steptoe writes about the ways in which black communities formed in the city, seeking to escape white supremacy and develop a sense of identity. Creole and Mexican migrants were forced to find identity within a specific and confusing definition of race. Creoles were defined as black, despite their combined French and African heritage. Mexican migrants were legally classified as white, though they often experienced discrimination for speaking Spanish and practicing Catholicism. Steptoe explains the ways in which various groups ‘passed’ as other races or ethnicities and how this process changed over time as the city became more racially diverse.
The book concludes by discussing the role of music in overcoming racial barriers. The various types of music, including blues, soul, and jazz, allowed for communication and connection between ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups across the city. In the Journal of Southern History, Julia Gunn wrote: “Steptoe’s focus on sound—through language and song—underscores for historians the promise of mining sources beyond the archives, and it highlights Houston’s significance in American music history.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, Volume 83, number 2, 2017, Julia Gunn, review of Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City, p. 464.
States News Service, May 25, 2016, “History Professor Investigates Transitions in Race, Gender”; March 9, 2017, “Book Explores ‘Comfortable Racial Contradictions’ in Brazil.”
ONLINE
Tyina Steptoe Website, http://tyinasteptoe.com (November 24, 2017).
University of Arizona, http://www.arizona.edu/ (November 24, 2017), author faculty profile.
About Tyina Steptoe
I am a historian whose work focuses on race, gender, and culture in the United States. My book, Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City, received the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book of 2016 (North American) from the Urban History Association, the 2017 W. Jackson Turrentine Book Prize from the Western History Association, and the 2017 Julia Ideson Award from the Friends of the Texas Room (Houston Public Library). Houston Bound shows how, despite the existence of Jim Crow laws that created a black/white racial binary, converging migrations to Houston—particularly those of ethnic Mexicans and Creoles of color—complicated ideas of blackness and whiteness and introduced different understandings about race between the 1920s and 1960s. The book also uses music to examine these racial complexities, tracing the emergence of Houston's blues and jazz scenes as well as the hybrid forms of these genres that arose when migrants forged shared social space and carved out new communities and politics.
My latest project explores the history of race and queerness in rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll music.
I am also committed to academic work that reaches beyond the walls of the university. For example, I served as a historical advisor on the television show Who Do You Think You Are, appearing on a 2016 episode that featured TV personality Aisha Tyler. While in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I helped organize a special summer course, “The Santa Fe Trail: In Search of the Multiracial West,” that took thirty-five undergraduate and graduate students on a two-week bus trip from Wisconsin to the Southwest in 2005.
Tyina Steptoe's picture
Contact Information
Tyina Steptoe
Associate Professor
Email: tsteptoe@email.arizona.edu
Office: CHVZ 319D
Office Hours: Currently on sabbatical
Website: http://www.tyinasteptoe.com
CV: PDF icon Tyina Steptoe's CV
Degree(s)
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dept. of History, 2008
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dept. of Afro-American Studies, 2002
B.S., The University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Radio-Television-Film, 1999
B.A., The University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of History, 1999
Courses Taught
HIST 150: U.S. Society and Institutions Since 1877
HIST 231: Music and Ethnic America
HIST 348: The South Since the Civil War
HIST 452/552: American Ethnic History
HIST 498: Music and Society (senior capstone seminar)
HIST 695: U.S. Urban History
1
Tyina
L.
Steptoe
, PhD
Department of History
University of Arizona
Cesar E. Chavez Building
1110 East James Rogers Road
P. O. Box 210023
Tucson, AZ
85721
-
0023
tsteptoe@email.arizona.edu
www.tyinasteptoe.com
Postdoctoral
Emp
loyment
Associate Professor,
Depa
rtment of History, University of Arizona,
2014
-
Faculty Affiliate, Africana Studies Program
Pr
om
oted from assistant professor,
2017
Assistant Professor, Department of American Ethnic Studies
,
University of Washington
, 2008
-
14
Education
Ph.D.,
2008,
Un
iversity of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
Department of History
Dissertation: “Dixie West: Race, Migration and the Color Lines in Jim Crow Houston,
1915
-
1945.” Commi
ttee chair: Stephen Kantrowitz
M.A.,
2002, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison
,
Department of
Afro
-
Amer
ican Studies
Thesis: “‘If You Ever Go to Houston, You Better Walk Right’: The Houston Riot of
1917.” Co
mmittee chair: Timothy Tyson
B.S.,
1999, The University of Texas at Austin, Depar
tment of Radio
-
Television
-
Film
B.A.,
1999, The University of Texas
a
t Austin, Department of History
Publications
(with awards)
Book
Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City
(Oakland: University of California Press,
2016)
.
•
Kenneth Jackson Award for
Best Book (North American), Urban History
Association
,
20
16
•
W. Turrentine Jackson
Book
Prize
, We
stern History Association, 2017
•
Julia Ideson Award
, Friends of the Texas Room (
Houston Metropolitan Research
Center
of the Houston Public Library
)
, 2017
2
Peer
-
reviewed a
rticles
“Big Mama
Thornton
, Little Richard,
and th
e Queer Roots of
Rock ‘n’ Roll,
”
American
Quarterly
(forthcoming)
.
“‘Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone’: Gender, Folklore, and the Black Working Class,”
Journal of
African American History
99, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 251
-
274.
•
Letitia Woods Article Prize
(hon
orable m
ention
)
, Association of Black Women
Historians
, 2015
•
Elli Kön
gäs
-
Maranda Professional Prize (honorable m
ention
)
,
American Folklore
Society
, 2015
“Jazz, Migration, and Community in Interwar Houston,”
Journal of the West
53, no. 3 (2014):
42
-
50.
S
hort
a
rticles
and b
log
p
osts
“The Flood Blues,” Process: A Blog for American History,
http://www.processhistory.org/steptoe
-
the
-
flood
-
blues/
, September 15, 2017.
“Prince’s
Afromestiz
aje
,” All Music Books Blog,
http://www.allmusicbooks.com/amb
-
blog/princes
-
afromestizaje
, May 30, 2016.
“Beyoncé, Creoles, and Modern Blackness,” University of California Press Bl
og,
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/20404/beyonce
-
creoles
-
and
-
modern
-
blackness/
, February
29, 2016. Re
-
posted on the All Music Books Blog,
http://www.allmusicbooks.com/amb
-
blog/beyonc%C3%A9
-
creoles
-
and
-
modern
-
blackness
, March 25, 2016.
“Cover Story:
Houston Bound
,” Campaign for the American Reader,
http://americareads.blogspot.com/2016/02/cover
-
story
-
houston
-
bound.html
, Feb.
9,
2016.
“'Creole' in Houston: Not Black, Not White, Different Than 'Mixed,'”
Houston Chronicle
,
December 20
, 2015. Also posted as “When Louisiana Creoles Arrived in Texas, Were
They Black or White?”
What It Means to Be American
, The Smithsonian and Zócalo
Public Square
-
http://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/encounters/when
-
louisiana
-
creoles
-
arrived
-
in
-
texas
-
were
-
they
-
black
-
or
-
white/
, December 15, 2015.
“Inez Calegon and Houston’s Frenchtown Neighborhood,” University of Califor
nia Press Blog
-
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/19321/inez
-
calegon
-
and
-
houstons
-
frenchtown
-
neighborhood
, October 11, 2015.
“Louisiana Houston,”
Oxford African
American Studies Center
, ed. Bernadette Pruitt (Oxford
University Press, 2014).
3
“An Ode to Country Music from a Black Dixie Chick,”
The Oxford American,
no. 54 (2006): 26
-
7. Reprinted in
The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response
, 5
th
Edition, (NY: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008).
Book r
eviews
Review of
Racial Dynamics in Early Twentieth
-
Century Austin, Texas
, by Jason McDonald,
Journal of Southern History
LXXIX, No. 4 (November 2013): pp. 990
-
991.
Review of
Imagining the African
American West,
by Blake Allmendinger,
Montana the
Magazine of Western History
(Autumn 2006): pp. 81
-
82.
Encyclopedia e
ntries
“Fifth Ward, “Ida B. Wells
-
Barnett,”
“
Mary Church Terrell
,” “
Bennett College
,” “
Fisk
University,”
“
Morehouse College,” and “Spel
man College” on BlackPast.org:
An Online
Reference Guide to African American History,
Quintard Taylor, ed.
Fellowships and Grants
Summerlee Research Fellowship for the Study of Texas History, Clements Center for Southwest
Studies, Southern
Methodist Un
iversity, 2012
-
2013
Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowshi
p for Junior Faculty, 2011
-
2012
Simpson Center Society of Scholars, University of W
ashington, 2011
-
2012 (declined)
Royalty Research Fund Scholars Program Award, Univ
ersity of Washington, 201
0
-
2011
Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation Fello
wship, 2006
-
2007
Humanities Exposed Scholarship,
Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 2005
–
2006
Gerald L. Davis Travel Grant, American Folklore Society,
Fall 2004
Advanced
Opportunity Fellowship,
University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 1999
-
2000;
2007
-
2008
Honors and Awards
Kenneth Jackson Award for
Best Book (North American)
of 2016
, Urban History Association
W. Turrentine Jackson
Book
Prize
, Western History
Association, 2017
Julia Ideson Award
for
Houston Bound
, Friends of the Texas Room (
Houston Metropolitan
Research Center
of the
Houston Public Library
)
, 2017
4
Honorable Mention,
Letitia Woods Article Prize
for “Jody’s Got Your Girl
and Gone
,
”
Association of Black Women Historians
,
2015
Honorable Mention, Elli Kö
ngäs
-
Maranda Professional Prize for “Jody’s Got Your Girl
and Gone
,
”
American Folklore Society
,
2015
Comparative Ethnic Studies Essay Prize, American
Studies Association,
Fall 2010
Innovation in Teaching Award, College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, Spring 2006
Texas Achievement Honors Award, The University of Texas
at Austin, 1994
-
1999
Honors Colloquium Award, The Universit
y of Texas at Au
stin, Fall 1994
Teaching
Fields
Comparative H
istory of Race and Ethnicity;
African American History;
Cultural History;
Nineteenth and Twentieth
-
century
U.S. History;
History of the South
;
Interdiscip
linary African
American Studies
Graduate reading s
emi
nars
U.S. Urban History,
University of Arizona
American Ethnic History
,
University of Arizona
The
Gilded Age and the
Progressive Era
,
University of Arizona
Undergraduate l
ecture
s
Music and Ethnic America, University of Arizona
T
he South S
ince the Civil Wa
r,
University of Arizona;
University of Washington
U.S. Society and Institutions since 1877,
University of Arizona
Introduction to African American History,
University of Washington
Introduction to African American Studies,
University of Washington
Music
, Folklore, and Performance in African American Society,
University of Washington
The Jazz Age,
University of Washington
Undergraduate s
eminars
Music and Society (
senior thesis capstone
)
,
University of Arizona
American Ethnic History
,
University of Arizo
na
The Jazz Age,
University of Arizona
The Progressive Era and the
Gilded Age,
University of Arizona
Senior Capstone Seminar, University of Washington
Special c
ourse
:
The Santa Fe Trail: In Search of the Multiracial West, two
-
week on
-
the
-
bus course with 3
5
undergraduate and graduate students, June 2005, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison
5
Graduate
advising
Lora Key, PhD
candidate
, Department of History, University of Arizona
. C
o
-
advisor with
Katherine Morrissey
Jalyn Wheatley,
M.A.
2016,
Department of Histo
ry, University of Arizona
. M
ajor advisor
Service
Professional
Chair, Sara Jackson Award Committee,
Western History Association, 2017; committee member,
2015
-
2016
Program Committee, Western
History Association, 2014
-
2015
Chair, Huntington
-
WHA Ridge F
ellowship Selection Committee, Western History Association,
20
13; Committee member, 2011
-
2012
Program Committee, Experience Music Project Pop Conference, Seattle, W
A, 2010
Peer Review: University of Oklahoma Press,
Souls
–
A Critical Journal of Black Po
litics,
Culture and Society
,
Oregon Historical Quarterly
; Oregon State University Press;
Oxford University Press, R
outledge Press;
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Department
Annual Peer Review Committee
, Department of Histo
ry, University of Arizona, 2
017
Faculty Hiring Committee,
Department of History, University of Arizona
, 2017
Curriculum Committee, Department of History, University of Arizona
, 2015
-
2017
Curriculum Committee, Department of American Ethnic Studies, University of Washington,
2009
-
2011
University
Faculty Advisor, Women of Purpose, University of Arizona
, 2016
-
17
Reviewer,
Royalty Research Fund,
University of Washington, 2009
Program Committee, “Voting Rights and the Road to Freedom,”
University of Wisconsin,
Fall
2002
Planning Com
mittee and Staff, “Journey to Selma,”
University of Wisconsin,
Summer 2002;
Spring 2003
Search Committee, Dean of Advising, College of Letters and Science Student Academic
Services
, University of Wisconsin, 2002
7
“Big Mama’s Shuffle’: Willie Mae Thornton
,
Female Masculinity
,
and the Lavender S
care
,
”
EMP Pop Conference, Seattle, WA, April 19, 2015.
“‘Soul Party’
: Black and Mexican American Music in Civil Rights
-
Era Houston,” Association
for the Study of African American Life and History, Memphis, TN, September
27, 2014.
Panelist, “Music, Ent
ertainment, and the Civil Rights Movement,” Association
for the Study of African American Life and History, Memphis, TN, September 27, 2014.
Chair,
“Who Let Them In? Reconsidering Boundaries of Civil Rights and Black Freedom
Movement Narratives,” Ameri
can Historical Associ
ation, Washington, D.C., Jan
2, 2014.
“The Santa Fe Trail: Teaching the Multiracial West in a Traveling Classroom,” Western History
Association, October 10, 2013.
Panelist, “State of the Field:
African American History in the West,”
Organization of American
Historians, San Francisco, April 11, 2013.
Respondent, “Black Freedom Movements in Washington,” Race, Radicalism, and Repression on
the Pacific Coast and Beyond, University of Washington, May 13, 2011.
“
Zydeco Sont Pas Sale
:
Creoles of Color, Black Texans, and the Creation of Houston’s
Frenchtown,” Organization of American Historians, Houston, TX, March 17, 2011.
“Catholics, Jews, and the Color Line in Jazz Age Houston,” American Studies Association
Annual Meeting, San Ant
onio, TX, November 21, 2010.
“‘We Were Too White to Be Black and Too Black to Be White’: Migration and the Question of
Race in Jim Crow Houston,” Southern Historical Association, Charlotte, NC, November
5,
2010.
"ABCs and C
-
D
-
E
-
Fs: High School Music P
rograms and the Cultivation of Jazz in Jim
Crow Houston," EMP Pop Conference, Seattle, WA, April 17, 2010.
Respondent, “Methodologies of Visibility,”
Dialoguing Difference 2nd Annual
Conference: Technologies of Visibility, May 14, 2010,
University of W
ashington.
“Sex/Love/Money: The Economics of Hip Hop Desire,” EMP Pop Conference, Seattle,
WA, April 18, 2009.
“Jazz and Popular Music in Jim Crow Houston,” Popular Culture Association/American
Culture Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, April 5,
2006.
“Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone,” The Future of Folk Conference, University of
Wisconsin
-
Madison, April 15, 2005.
10
Teaching Assistant, Department of History,
2004
-
2005
Instructor, Pre
-
College Enrichment Opportunity
Program
for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE),
University of Wisco
nsin
-
Madison, Summers 2004
-
2006
Academic A
dvisor, Honors Program, College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
Spring 2002
Student Services Coordinator, Pathways to Excellence Programs and Services, College of
Letters and Science, University
of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 2001
-
2002
Teaching Assistant, Department of Afro
-
American Studies, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
2000
-
2001
Managing Editor, Research Communica
tions, Austin, Texas, 1998
-
1999
Professional Associations
American Studies Association
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Organization of American Historians
Western H
istory Association
Tyina L. Steptoe is an associate professor of History at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her work focuses on race, gender, and culture in the United States. Her award-winning book, Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City (University of California Press, 2016), examines how the migration of Creoles of color, ethnic Mexicans, and black East Texans complicated notions of race in Houston between the 1920s and 1960s.
Tyina L. Steptoe was born and raised in Houston, Texas. She is an associate professor of History at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She holds a Ph.D. in History and an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also earned a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film and a B.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Steptoe’s work focuses on race, gender, and culture in the United States. Her book, Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City (University of California Press, 2016), examines how the migration of black East Texans, Creoles of color, and ethnic Mexicans complicated notions of race in Houston between the 1920s and 1960s. Houston Bound has received awards from the Urban History Association, the Western History Association, and the Friends of the Texas Room at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center/Houston Public Library.
She is currently working on a project that examines the history of rhythm and blues music through the lens of race and sexuality. An article on musicians Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton and Little Richard will be published in the American Quarterly in March 2018.
Steptoe’s public writing has been featured in publications and websites like the Oxford American, Houston Chronicle, Campaign for the American Reader, The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response, the Oxford African American Studies Center, and “What It Means to Be American,” a joint venture of Zócalo Public Square and the Smithsonian. Her academic articles have appeared in the Journal of African American History and the Journal of the West.
Steptoe is the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
1
Tyina
L.
Steptoe
, PhD
Department of History
University of Arizona
Cesar E. Chavez Building
1110 East James Rogers Road
P. O. Box 210023
Tucson, AZ
85721
-
0023
tsteptoe@email.arizona.edu
www.tyinasteptoe.com
Postdoctoral
Emp
loyment
Associate Professor,
Depa
rtment of History, University of Arizona,
2014
-
Faculty Affiliate, Africana Studies Program
Pr
om
oted from assistant professor,
2017
Assistant Professor, Department of American Ethnic Studies
,
University of Washington
, 2008
-
14
Education
Ph.D.,
2008,
Un
iversity of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
Department of History
Dissertation: “Dixie West: Race, Migration and the Color Lines in Jim Crow Houston,
1915
-
1945.” Commi
ttee chair: Stephen Kantrowitz
M.A.,
2002, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison
,
Department of
Afro
-
Amer
ican Studies
Thesis: “‘If You Ever Go to Houston, You Better Walk Right’: The Houston Riot of
1917.” Co
mmittee chair: Timothy Tyson
B.S.,
1999, The University of Texas at Austin, Depar
tment of Radio
-
Television
-
Film
B.A.,
1999, The University of Texas
a
t Austin, Department of History
Publications
(with awards)
Book
Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City
(Oakland: University of California Press,
2016)
.
•
Kenneth Jackson Award for
Best Book (North American), Urban History
Association
,
20
16
•
W. Turrentine Jackson
Book
Prize
, We
stern History Association, 2017
•
Julia Ideson Award
, Friends of the Texas Room (
Houston Metropolitan Research
Center
of the Houston Public Library
)
, 2017
2
Peer
-
reviewed a
rticles
“Big Mama
Thornton
, Little Richard,
and th
e Queer Roots of
Rock ‘n’ Roll,
”
American
Quarterly
(forthcoming)
.
“‘Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone’: Gender, Folklore, and the Black Working Class,”
Journal of
African American History
99, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 251
-
274.
•
Letitia Woods Article Prize
(hon
orable m
ention
)
, Association of Black Women
Historians
, 2015
•
Elli Kön
gäs
-
Maranda Professional Prize (honorable m
ention
)
,
American Folklore
Society
, 2015
“Jazz, Migration, and Community in Interwar Houston,”
Journal of the West
53, no. 3 (2014):
42
-
50.
S
hort
a
rticles
and b
log
p
osts
“The Flood Blues,” Process: A Blog for American History,
http://www.processhistory.org/steptoe
-
the
-
flood
-
blues/
, September 15, 2017.
“Prince’s
Afromestiz
aje
,” All Music Books Blog,
http://www.allmusicbooks.com/amb
-
blog/princes
-
afromestizaje
, May 30, 2016.
“Beyoncé, Creoles, and Modern Blackness,” University of California Press Bl
og,
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/20404/beyonce
-
creoles
-
and
-
modern
-
blackness/
, February
29, 2016. Re
-
posted on the All Music Books Blog,
http://www.allmusicbooks.com/amb
-
blog/beyonc%C3%A9
-
creoles
-
and
-
modern
-
blackness
, March 25, 2016.
“Cover Story:
Houston Bound
,” Campaign for the American Reader,
http://americareads.blogspot.com/2016/02/cover
-
story
-
houston
-
bound.html
, Feb.
9,
2016.
“'Creole' in Houston: Not Black, Not White, Different Than 'Mixed,'”
Houston Chronicle
,
December 20
, 2015. Also posted as “When Louisiana Creoles Arrived in Texas, Were
They Black or White?”
What It Means to Be American
, The Smithsonian and Zócalo
Public Square
-
http://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/encounters/when
-
louisiana
-
creoles
-
arrived
-
in
-
texas
-
were
-
they
-
black
-
or
-
white/
, December 15, 2015.
“Inez Calegon and Houston’s Frenchtown Neighborhood,” University of Califor
nia Press Blog
-
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/19321/inez
-
calegon
-
and
-
houstons
-
frenchtown
-
neighborhood
, October 11, 2015.
“Louisiana Houston,”
Oxford African
American Studies Center
, ed. Bernadette Pruitt (Oxford
University Press, 2014).
3
“An Ode to Country Music from a Black Dixie Chick,”
The Oxford American,
no. 54 (2006): 26
-
7. Reprinted in
The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response
, 5
th
Edition, (NY: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008).
Book r
eviews
Review of
Racial Dynamics in Early Twentieth
-
Century Austin, Texas
, by Jason McDonald,
Journal of Southern History
LXXIX, No. 4 (November 2013): pp. 990
-
991.
Review of
Imagining the African
American West,
by Blake Allmendinger,
Montana the
Magazine of Western History
(Autumn 2006): pp. 81
-
82.
Encyclopedia e
ntries
“Fifth Ward, “Ida B. Wells
-
Barnett,”
“
Mary Church Terrell
,” “
Bennett College
,” “
Fisk
University,”
“
Morehouse College,” and “Spel
man College” on BlackPast.org:
An Online
Reference Guide to African American History,
Quintard Taylor, ed.
Fellowships and Grants
Summerlee Research Fellowship for the Study of Texas History, Clements Center for Southwest
Studies, Southern
Methodist Un
iversity, 2012
-
2013
Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowshi
p for Junior Faculty, 2011
-
2012
Simpson Center Society of Scholars, University of W
ashington, 2011
-
2012 (declined)
Royalty Research Fund Scholars Program Award, Univ
ersity of Washington, 201
0
-
2011
Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation Fello
wship, 2006
-
2007
Humanities Exposed Scholarship,
Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 2005
–
2006
Gerald L. Davis Travel Grant, American Folklore Society,
Fall 2004
Advanced
Opportunity Fellowship,
University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 1999
-
2000;
2007
-
2008
Honors and Awards
Kenneth Jackson Award for
Best Book (North American)
of 2016
, Urban History Association
W. Turrentine Jackson
Book
Prize
, Western History
Association, 2017
Julia Ideson Award
for
Houston Bound
, Friends of the Texas Room (
Houston Metropolitan
Research Center
of the
Houston Public Library
)
, 2017
4
Honorable Mention,
Letitia Woods Article Prize
for “Jody’s Got Your Girl
and Gone
,
”
Association of Black Women Historians
,
2015
Honorable Mention, Elli Kö
ngäs
-
Maranda Professional Prize for “Jody’s Got Your Girl
and Gone
,
”
American Folklore Society
,
2015
Comparative Ethnic Studies Essay Prize, American
Studies Association,
Fall 2010
Innovation in Teaching Award, College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison, Spring 2006
Texas Achievement Honors Award, The University of Texas
at Austin, 1994
-
1999
Honors Colloquium Award, The Universit
y of Texas at Au
stin, Fall 1994
Teaching
Fields
Comparative H
istory of Race and Ethnicity;
African American History;
Cultural History;
Nineteenth and Twentieth
-
century
U.S. History;
History of the South
;
Interdiscip
linary African
American Studies
Graduate reading s
emi
nars
U.S. Urban History,
University of Arizona
American Ethnic History
,
University of Arizona
The
Gilded Age and the
Progressive Era
,
University of Arizona
Undergraduate l
ecture
s
Music and Ethnic America, University of Arizona
T
he South S
ince the Civil Wa
r,
University of Arizona;
University of Washington
U.S. Society and Institutions since 1877,
University of Arizona
Introduction to African American History,
University of Washington
Introduction to African American Studies,
University of Washington
Music
, Folklore, and Performance in African American Society,
University of Washington
The Jazz Age,
University of Washington
Undergraduate s
eminars
Music and Society (
senior thesis capstone
)
,
University of Arizona
American Ethnic History
,
University of Arizo
na
The Jazz Age,
University of Arizona
The Progressive Era and the
Gilded Age,
University of Arizona
Senior Capstone Seminar, University of Washington
Special c
ourse
:
The Santa Fe Trail: In Search of the Multiracial West, two
-
week on
-
the
-
bus course with 3
5
undergraduate and graduate students, June 2005, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison
8
“‘Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone’: Gender, Power, and the Black Home,” American
Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, U
T, October 2004.
“‘Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone’: Race, Gender, and a Black Folk Hero,” Association for
the Study of African American Life and History, Milwaukee, WI, September
2003.
“When Cowboys Were in Vogue: The Myth of the Urban Cowboy,”
“The Wes
t(s) in Film,
Television, and History,” Film and History Society Conference, Kansas City,
MO,
November 2002.
“Government Repression of Political Organizing, Past and Present,”
Building Unity
Conference, University of Wisconsin System, Madison, WI,
Novemb
er 2001.
Roundtables
“Teaching Race on the Road,” Western Historical Association, St. Louis, MO, October 2006.
“The Traveling Classroom,” National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, Chicago, May 2006.
“
Achieving the Multi
-
Cultural Classroom on a Predomin
ately White Campus,”
National
Conference on Race and Ethnicity, Miami Beach, FL, June 2004.
“An Innovation in Academic Culture: Undergraduates Teaching Undergraduates at the
University of Wisconsin,” National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, San Franc
isco,
CA, June 2003.
Invited t
alks and
c
ommunity
p
resentations
“
Migration and the Making of a Multiethnic City,” School of Sociology
Brown Bag,
September 1, 2017.
Panelist,
“White Supremacy, Monuments, and Memory,” University of Arizona,
August 30,
2
017.
Panelist, “
100 Black Men, 100 Stories:
Texas Stories
Book Forum, Houston, TX,
July 25,
2017.
Panelist, “A Conversation on Segregated Spaces,” Tucson Festival of Books, March
11, 2017.
“History of the Ku Klux Klan and White National
ism in the U.S.A.,” Inauguration Day
Teach
-
in and March, Tucson, AZ, January 20, 2017.
Panelist,
“Communities of Color in Houston
,
”
Lone Star Book Festival,
Kingwood
,
TX,
April 9,
2016.
Public l
ecture
on
Houston Bound
, Gregory School for Afr
ican Americ
an History, Houston,
March 19, 2016
.
9
“Blaxican History: African American & Latino Cultural Connections in the Bayou
City,” Summer Workshop on African American Texas History, Texas Southern
University,
Houston,
July 10, 2015.
“Houston Bound: Space, Sound
and the Making of a Multiracial City,” Clements Center
for Southwest Studies Brown Bag Lecture Series, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
TX, February 13, 2013.
“Migration, Culture and the Color Line in Jim Crow Houston,” Godbey Lecture Series, Dedm
an
College, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, October 8, 2012.
“Black Protest and the Blues Impulse,” YouthSource, Renton, WA, May 24, 2012.
“Black Women in U.S. History,” Drug Enforcement Administration Black History Month
Celebration, Seatt
le, WA, February 3, 2012.
“Mammy, Jezebel, and Sambo: Gender, Black Stereotypes and U.S Politics,” YouthSource,
Renton, WA, November 15, 2011.
“Culture and the Color Line in Jim Crow Houston,” Diversity Research Institute Brown Bag
Series, October 29
, 2010.
“Constructing Blackness in the United States,” University Beyond Bars/Prisoners
Education Network, August, 21, 2010.
“Hip Hop and Salsa: Gender in Music Communities,” Women Studies Department
Brownbag Event, February 19, 2010, University of Was
hington, Seattle.
"Racial Legacies of the Great Migration," Phinney Neighborhood Association, Seattle,
WA, February 12, 2010.
“Slavery and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1775
-
1811” University Beyond Bars/Prisoners
Education Network, Monroe, WA, Sept
ember 21, 2009.
“Marcus Garvey and the African Diaspora,” Prisoners Education Network Juneteenth
Celebration, June 20, 2009, Monroe, Washington.
“Black Protest in the Jim Crow South,” University Beyond Bars/Prisoners Education Network,
February 14, 200
9.
“Teaching the Great Migration,” All Eyes on History, Seattle, WA, February 10, 2009.
Pre
doctoral Employment
Project Assistant, Ethnic Studies Cluster, College of Letters and Science, University of
Wisconsin
-
Madison, 2007
-
2008
10
Teaching Assistant, Department of History,
2004
-
2005
Instructor, Pre
-
College Enrichment Opportunity
Program
for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE),
University of Wisco
nsin
-
Madison, Summers 2004
-
2006
Academic A
dvisor, Honors Program, College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
Spring 2002
Student Services Coordinator, Pathways to Excellence Programs and Services, College of
Letters and Science, University
of Wisconsin
-
Madison, 2001
-
2002
Teaching Assistant, Department of Afro
-
American Studies, University of Wisconsin
-
Madison,
2000
-
2001
Managing Editor, Research Communica
tions, Austin, Texas, 1998
-
1999
Professional Associations
American Studies Association
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Organization of American Historians
Western H
istory Association
Tyina Steptoe is an assistant professor in the History Department at the University of Arizona. Her previous position was as assistant professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. She attended the University of Texas at Austin as an undergraduate, and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A historian of African-American culture and society, her current research focuses on black and Creole migration to Houston, Texas, in the twentieth century. Her work has been published in The Oxford American, Montana: the Magazine of Western History, and the compilation, The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response (5th edition).
AFFILIATION:
University of Arizona EMAIL:
steptoe@uw.edu
WEBSITE:
http://faculty.washington.edu/steptoe/
BlackPast.Org Contributions:
Academic Historians
About Tyina Steptoe
Work
The University of Arizona
Associate Professor of History · Tucson, Arizona
Department of History
University of Washington, Seattle
Assistant Professor · September 2008 to July 2014 · Seattle, Washington
Current City and Hometown
Tucson, Arizona
Current city
Houston, Texas
Hometown
Favorites
Music
[Michael Jackson]
Michael Jackson
Books
[Friday Night Lights]
Friday Night Lights
Movies
[Sixteen Candles]
Sixteen Candles
Athletes
[Richard Sherman]
Richard Sherman
Sports Teams
[Houston Texans]
Houston Texans
History Professor Investigates Transitions in Race, Gender
UA cultural historian Tyina Steptoe has looked into Houston’s transformation into an ethnically diverse urban area and how popular musicians impact ideas about gender.
Lori Harwood
,
UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
May 25, 2016
Resources for the Media
Tyina Steptoe’s book “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” was published in November.
Tyina Steptoe’s book “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” was published in November.
Tyina Steptoe, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona Department of History, uses culture — and especially music — to unpack some of the transitions in race and gender that have occurred in the 20th century.
For her first book, "Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City," Steptoe examines how, despite Anglo attempts to fix racial categories through Jim Crow laws, the migration of Creoles and Mexican-Americans into Houston in the 1920s introduced different understandings about race.
Because of the great Mississippi flood in 1927, a large group of "Creoles of color" — descended from free people of color, as they were called before the Civil War — migrated to Houston from Louisiana. In Louisiana, Creoles of color usually were descendants of white men, often French-American or Spanish-American, and black women, often enslaved women. Emancipated by their fathers, this mixed-race population formed a separate group in colonial Louisiana.
Around the same time, the Mexican-American population began to surge in Houston. Houston was transformed from a black-and-white frontier town into one of the most ethnically and racially diverse urban areas in the United States.
"It ended up being the basis of the book, looking at migration as the lenses to talk about how notions of race get muddled between the '20s and the '60s," Steptoe said.
Steptoe was interested in how these new groups negotiated the Jim Crow laws in the state. Creoles did not identify as black but were required by law to be segregated with blacks. Some Creoles decided to try to pass for white, but most chose to embrace their ethnic identity.
"I found that the majority of Creoles were more interested in preserving family and cultural ties," Steptoe said. "All of these things that define Creole, such as food and music, you have to give up if you want to pass as white. They did create a community in Houston called Frenchtown, which was really important to the preservation of the Creole identity in Houston."
Because Creoles were segregated with blacks, there were tensions when Creoles started going to black schools.
"Many of the black students felt there was favoritism to lighter-skinned Creoles," Steptoe said. "At the same time, many Creoles said they felt ostracized by the majority of the black students."
Creoles shared cultural similarities with the Mexican Americans; both were predominantly Catholic in a Protestant state. And even though Mexican-Americans were considered white according to the Jim Crow laws, in white schools they were segregated into separated classroom, ostensibly because of language differences.
Although tensions existed between groups, repeated interactions and the sharing of space eventually resulted in a mixing of cultures, which is reflected in the music, which Steptoe often uses as a primary source in her research.
Steptoe found that zydeco music was actually created in Houston, as it was a blend of east Texas blues with "la-la" — Creole music that could take the form of blues or a waltz but was performed in French with accordions.
Because of this cultural blending, today Creole serves as a type of ethnicity that exists within blackness.
"Americans rarely consider ethnicities within the category of black," Steptoe said. "When we discuss racial blackness, we tend to portray African-Americans as a monolithic group."
To research her book, Steptoe started in the archives like most historians, slogging through newspapers. However, after she discovered a collection of oral histories from the 1970s, she started doing her own interviews.
"I contacted people in Frenchtown to see if I could sit at their kitchen table and talk to them," she said. "These were some of my best sources."
Steptoe is at work on her next book project, investigating how notions of masculinity and femininity have changed over the 20th century, and how popular music and musicians have either pushed or reflected these changes.
She is looking into the history of rhythm and blues performers Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton and Little Richard. Steptoe said that although Thornton's record label pushed her to be the model of the 1950s woman, offstage she presented as masculine. Likewise, Little Richard was much more female presenting than his "sanitized" public persona reflected. Steptoe said both artists came out of a tradition of traveling blues performances popular in the 1940s, which routinely included cross-dressing.
"Our popular image of the '50s tends to be the housewife in pearls vacuuming in heels. It’s such a hetero normative construction of gender and family. But what was actually going on was something far more gender ambiguous," Steptoe said. "I am looking at how queer performance was actually part of the roots of rhythm and blues performance."
This past fall, Steptoe researched the ancestry of actress Aisha Tyler for the TLC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" Steptoe had her students watch the show — in which she appeared onscreen — to illustrate that professors do research as well as teach. Steptoe also requires her students to write research papers.
"History is not about memorizing dates and names," Steptoe said. "History is about investigation and then drawing conclusions based on that investigation."
Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City
Julia Gunn
83.2 (May 2017): p464.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City. By Tyina L. Steptoe. American Crossroads. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. x, 327. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-520-28258-2; cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-520-28257-5.)
Over the course of the twentieth century, Houston, Texas, became the fourth-largest city in the United States and one of the nation's most ethnically and racially diverse metropolitan areas. Yet the city too often remains on the periphery of histories of race, migration, and twentieth-century American urban development. Tyina L. Steptoe's Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City offers a welcome corrective to this historiographical oversight by examining, in fine detail, the centrality of migration to understanding Houston's history. The city became an important site of contact for English-, Spanish-, and French-speaking migrants who brought with them complex and dynamic understandings of race that challenged the black/white binary of the Jim Crow regime. Steptoe reveals how black East Texans, Creoles, Tejanos, and Mexican migrants transformed the city's spatial and cultural landscape between World War I and the 1960s.
Building on the work of David R. Roediger and other scholars of whiteness and race formation, Houston Bound offers a sociocultural exploration of the "volatile nature of racial blackness" (p. 6). Divided into three sections, Houston Bound begins by tracing the social construction of blackness in the Bayou City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Steptoe details how black migrants from East Texas, descendants of slaves, "worked to build an alternate geography over ... [a] landscape of violent white supremacy" (p. 23). They built neighborhoods, such as Freedman's Town, in the city's Fourth Ward, and Independence Heights, a three-square-mile area that separated from Houston in 1915 to become the state's first "'all Negro city'" (p. 30). Such spaces, history, and increased political activism fostered a sense of shared racial identity among black Houstonians.
Creole and ethnic Mexican migrants also found themselves entangled in Jim Crow's narrow racial binary. Louisiana Creoles saw themselves as neither black nor white based on their combined French and African heritage, despite the fact that they were legally classified as black. Ethnic Mexicans, in contrast, were white by law, but their cultural practices, such as speaking Spanish and practicing Catholicism, often became grounds for exclusion from white classrooms and other public spaces. Despite such discrimination, black Houstonians resented the fact that ethnic Mexicans and other European immigrants were considered white under the law. In 1924, for example, the Houston Informer complained of the "numerous foreigners in this city, who can barely speak our common tongue," yet had more rights as citizens than native-born black Houstonians (p. 99).
As Steptoe argues, "A person's perceived proximity to blackness (and, therefore, distance from whiteness) could also determine his or her place in the local hierarchy," particularly in a city with a growing and racially ambiguous migrant population (p. 94). A teenage Langston Hughes, for example, successfully boarded a whites-only sleeping car traveling across Texas by purchasing his ticket in Spanish. Likewise, ethnic Mexicans passed as Italian, French, and Spanish immigrants. Creole migrants accessed white spaces by dropping their Francophone accents--some temporarily, and others permanently. For those with light complexions and linguistic flexibility, racial identity in Houston was potentially malleable and contextual, Houston Bound ends by exploring how various forms of music including Texas tenor jazz, orquesta, zydeco, la-la, rhythm and blues, and soul facilitated contact and collaboration across racial, ethic, and linguistic groups in the city.
Among Houston Bound's, most important contributions is centering Houston--and the urban South--in the broader narrative of race and migration in American cities. The story of early-twentieth-century immigration too often skews toward America's coasts, and Steptoe makes a compelling case for scholars to shift their orientation south. Steptoe's focus on sound--through language and song--underscores for historians the promise of mining sources beyond the archives, and it highlights Houston's significance in American music history. Where the work falls short is in failing to engage with (or even reference) the substantive critiques of whiteness and race formation scholarship. As critics have argued, such work has, at times, paid inadequate attention to questions of class, power, employers, and the state. Steptoe's analysis would have been enriched by more attention to divisions within black, Creole, and ethnic Mexican communities--especially along class lines and in workplaces.
That said, Houston Bound should be required reading for scholars interested in race, migration, and urban and cultural development in the Sun Belt and the nation.
Julia Gunn
University of Pennsylvania
Gunn, Julia
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gunn, Julia. "Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 2, 2017, p. 464+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA495476261&it=r&asid=d7d154575b4abe8bf41d151b9924d611. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495476261
HISTORY PROFESSOR INVESTIGATES TRANSITIONS IN RACE, GENDER
(May 25, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 States News Service
Tucson, AZ -- The following information was released by the University of Arizona:
Tyina Steptoe, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona Department of History, uses culture -- and especially music -- to unpack some of the transitions in race and gender that have occurred in the 20th century.
For her first book, "Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City," Steptoe examines how, despite Anglo attempts to fix racial categories through Jim Crow laws, the migration of Creoles and Mexican-Americans into Houston in the 1920s introduced different understandings about race.
Because of the great Mississippi flood in 1927, a large group of "Creoles of color" -- descended from free people of color, as they were called before the Civil War -- migrated to Houston from Louisiana. In Louisiana, Creoles of color usually were descendants of white men, often French-American or Spanish-American, and black women, often enslaved women. Emancipated by their fathers, this mixed-race population formed a separate group in colonial Louisiana.
Around the same time, the Mexican-American population began to surge in Houston. Houston was transformed from a black-and-white frontier town into one of the most ethnically and racially diverse urban areas in the United States.
"It ended up being the basis of the book, looking at migration as the lenses to talk about how notions of race get muddled between the '20s and the '60s," Steptoe said.
Steptoe was interested in how these new groups negotiated the Jim Crow laws in the state. Creoles did not identify as black but were required by law to be segregated with blacks. Some Creoles decided to try to pass for white, but most chose to embrace their ethnic identity.
"I found that the majority of Creoles were more interested in preserving family and cultural ties," Steptoe said. "All of these things that define Creole, such as food and music, you have to give up if you want to pass as white. They did create a community in Houston called Frenchtown, which was really important to the preservation of the Creole identity in Houston."
Because Creoles were segregated with blacks, there were tensions when Creoles started going to black schools.
"Many of the black students felt there was favoritism to lighter-skinned Creoles," Steptoe said. "At the same time, many Creoles said they felt ostracized by the majority of the black students."
Creoles shared cultural similarities with the Mexican Americans; both were predominantly Catholic in a Protestant state. And even though Mexican-Americans were considered white according to the Jim Crow laws, in white schools they were segregated into separated classroom, ostensibly because of language differences.
Although tensions existed between groups, repeated interactions and the sharing of space eventually resulted in a mixing of cultures, which is reflected in the music, which Steptoe often uses as a primary source in her research.
Steptoe found that zydeco music was actually created in Houston, as it was a blend of east Texas blues with "la-la" -- Creole music that could take the form of blues or a waltz but was performed in French with accordions.
Because of this cultural blending, today Creole serves as a type of ethnicity that exists within blackness.
"Americans rarely consider ethnicities within the category of black," Steptoe said. "When we discuss racial blackness, we tend to portray African-Americans as a monolithic group."
To research her book, Steptoe started in the archives like most historians, slogging through newspapers. However, after she discovered a collection of oral histories from the 1970s, she started doing her own interviews.
"I contacted people in Frenchtown to see if I could sit at their kitchen table and talk to them," she said. "These were some of my best sources."
Steptoe is at work on her next book project, investigating how notions of masculinity and femininity have changed over the 20th century, and how popular music and musicians have either pushed or reflected these changes.
She is looking into the history of rhythm and blues performers Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton and Little Richard. Steptoe said that although Thornton's record label pushed her to be the model of the 1950s woman, offstage she presented as masculine. Likewise, Little Richard was much more female presenting than his "sanitized" public persona reflected. Steptoe said both artists came out of a tradition of traveling blues performances popular in the 1940s, which routinely included cross-dressing.
"Our popular image of the '50s tends to be the housewife in pearls vacuuming in heels. It's such a hetero normative construction of gender and family. But what was actually going on was something far more gender ambiguous," Steptoe said. "I am looking at how queer performance was actually part of the roots of rhythm and blues performance."
This past fall, Steptoe researched the ancestry of actress Aisha Tyler for the TLC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" Steptoe had her students watch the show -- in which she appeared onscreen -- to illustrate that professors do research as well as teach. Steptoe also requires her students to write research papers.
"History is not about memorizing dates and names," Steptoe said. "History is about investigation and then drawing conclusions based on that investigation."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"HISTORY PROFESSOR INVESTIGATES TRANSITIONS IN RACE, GENDER." States News Service, 25 May 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453418803&it=r&asid=604a3720bc116d33e8c16e14d052a775. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453418803
BOOK EXPLORES 'COMFORTABLE RACIAL CONTRADICTIONS' IN BRAZIL
(Mar. 9, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 States News Service
Tucson, AZ -- The following information was released by the University of Arizona:
Jennifer Roth-Gordon at Tucson Festival of Books
Jennifer Roth-Gordon will speak about her book "Race and the Brazilian Body: Blackness, Whiteness and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro" during the Tucson Festival of Books, to be held March 11 and 12. Roth-Gordon will be part of the panel "A Conversation on Segregated Spaces" at 10 a.m. March 11 at the UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences pavilion. With scholars Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeff Chang and Tyina Steptoe, Roth-Gordon will explore the ways in which racially segregated spaces are constructed through language, law and culture in the U.S. and beyond.
In Rio de Janeiro, few geographic boundaries separate the "haves" from the "have-nots." This housing project occupies some of Latin America's most expensive real estate. (Photo: Marcelo Santos Braga)
Roth-Gordon, an associate professor in the School of Anthropology, has been studying race relations in Rio de Janeiro for more than 20 years.
University of Arizona anthropologist Jennifer Roth-Gordon spent 10 days in Brazil leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games with her children, two of whom are African-American and adopted.
During the visit, one shop owner yelled at her son, assuming he was a pivete (street kid). In another instance, a restaurant owner told the waiter not to let Roth-Gordon order any more food for the children, assuming they were begging. In Brazil, racism is considered immoral and un-Brazilian and, in both instances, the business owners were excessively apologetic when they realized their mistake.
In her new book, "Race and the Brazilian Body: Blackness, Whiteness and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro," Roth-Gordon explores what she calls the "comfortable racial contradiction" that exists in Brazil, a country that prides itself on its history of racial mixture and lack of overt racial conflict. The book, published by the University of California Press, looks at how racial ideas about the superiority of whiteness and the inferiority of blackness continue to play out in the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro's residents.
The book was 20 years in the making. Roth-Gordon, an associate professor in the UA School of Anthropology, went to Rio de Janeiro in graduate school and has gone back every year since.
Using linguistic and ethnographic analysis, she conducted interviews, recorded conversations and observed the day-to-day lives of people living in the housing projects and in the whiter middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. She hired a youth who lived in the housing projects as a research assistant.
Roth-Gordon said that one of the most interesting things about race relations in Brazil is that "there is profound racial inequality in Brazil and yet people do not think of themselves as racist." Brazilians have a history of promoting themselves as a racially mixed and racially democratic society. Many view their racial tolerance as one of the ways they are superior to other countries, especially the United States.
Roth-Gordon said that Brazilians certainly recognize the inequality that exists in their country, as the rich and poor live in close proximity. All of those famous beaches connect by hills that have favelas, or informal settlements. However, many Brazilians believe that the inequality and prejudice is due to socioeconomic class rather than race.
For her research, Roth-Gordon wanted to dig deeper into day-to-day interactions to explore the discrepancy. "Racial inequality has be reconstructed every single day," she said. "It has to be reproduced."
In her book, Roth-Gordon emphasizes how Rio residents "read" others for racial signs. The amount of whiteness or blackness a body displays is determined not only through observations of phenotypical features -- including skin color, hair texture and facial features -- but also through attention to cultural and linguistic practices, including the use of nonstandard Portuguese and slang, which is associated with "poor, black shantytown living."
Roth-Gordon made recordings of largely dark-skinned youth and played them for middle-class families. She cites an example of when a youth in the projects was talking about his fear of being robbed.
"I played the recording for a family, and they reacted as if he were the criminal," Roth-Gordon said. "They ignored what he said. All they could hear, because to them slang is such a clear marker of criminality and poverty, was this is the language of a criminal.
"I have a whole chapter on how the white middle class raise their kids to make sure they are avoiding slang and speaking standard Portuguese. When you ask them why, they won't tell you 'I don't want my kid to sound black.'"
The conversations Roth-Gordon collected include youth in the housing projects talking about their strategies for talking to the police, which include speaking standard Portuguese.
"We don't just size people up by what they look like, especially in a place like Brazil where people are racially mixed," Roth-Gordon said. "How should this cop treat this kid? Like a poor black criminal or like a middle-class citizen?"
Roth-Gordon believes that acknowledging or studying only overt acts of racism is like studying the "tip of the iceberg."
"It's clearly so much deeper than that," she said. "What is under the water is creating a base for what we can see."
For example, with regard to police killing black men, she says many are prepared to punish those instances. "But they are unwilling to go beyond that and say these cops are reacting to these ideas that we have about blackness, linking it to criminality. And these ideas are not just ideas. We have a system in both the U.S. and Brazil that disproportionately locks up people of color, a system of justice that has never treated black men fairly. Those ideas are the rest of the iceberg."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"BOOK EXPLORES 'COMFORTABLE RACIAL CONTRADICTIONS' IN BRAZIL." States News Service, 9 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA484908919&it=r&asid=286bb2a2414db7615b4200ea34e28750. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A484908919