Jason Jordan, Ph.D.
Department of Human Sciences - History
College of Arts and Sciences
Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
B.A., Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
About Jason
I received my doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I teach courses in African-American and United States History. A core component of my work is the belief that history matters for understanding the world around us. Historical knowledge is empowering, life-changing, and liberatory. My research and pedagogical interests all center on issues of race and its role in the shaping of modern America. I find that an understanding of these issues is especially important for college students navigating their way through an American society that struggles to confront the racial legacies of the past. I challenge my students to see history as more than just something we must remember, "so that the past doesn’t repeat itself," but to view the past as something vital for interpreting today.
Selected Publications
Forthcoming: "We’ll Have No Race Trouble Here: The Memphis Reign of Terror," inAn Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee, ed. Charles McKinney and Aram Goudsouzian, University of Kentucky Press.
Review of Jim Crow’s Counterculture: The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945, by R.A. Lawson, West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, Vol. 67, 2017.
Review of Keeping Heart: A Memoir of Family Struggle, Race, and Medicine, by Otis Trotter, Ohio History, Spring 2017, 85-87.
Conference Presentations
"Visions and Memories: The Desegregation of Memphis Schools," Association for the Study of African-American History (ASALH) Conference, September 29, 2017
"Inside and Outside Agitators: Black Politics in 1940’s Memphis," From Civil War to Civil Rights: Race, Region and the Making of Public Memory,Rhodes College, March 1, 2014.
"’We’ll Have No Race Trouble Here:’ Southern Politics and the Memphis Reign of Terror." Race and Place: Cultural Landscapes of Black Life in America, University of South Florida, February 20, 2014
In the News
Print Interview by Tom Troy, "GOP Finds Few Black Supporters in Toledo Region," The Toledo Blade, February 26, 2017. Link
TV Interview by Jeff Smith, "Election 2016, Historically Speaking," 13 ABC News Toledo, October 16, 2016. Link
Courses Taught
- HIST 1120 History of African-Americans
- HIST 1121 United States to 1865
- HIST 1122 United States since 1865