Author Archives: msjonz

I’m collaborating with the William L. Clements Library on The Arabella Chapman Project. Chapman was a young African American woman who, in the 1880s and 1890s, assembled two photographic albums that are now archived at the Clements. The images are stunning; … Continue reading →

Most Thursday evenings you can find me in front of my television immersed in the worlds that Shonda Rhimes has conjured up: Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder. Until recently I considered this to be at best leisure … Continue reading →

My writing on mixed-race identity is deeply autobiographical, inspired by the style of my teacher Patricia Williams. In this talk for the Michigan Law MLK Day celebration, I used my own life stories to open up reflections on how law … Continue reading →

Impolite Conversations is a fascinating collection of essay that captures a set of exchanges between journalist Cora Daniels and cultural anthropologist John L. Jackson, Jr. I make an appearance in Jackson’s chapter titled “All my best friends are light skinned women.” You’ll have … Continue reading →

For the past three years, I’ve been working with The Celia Project, a research and writing collaboration between scholars of history, law, and literature. Our broad subject is the history of slavery and sexual violence and the case of Missouri v. … Continue reading →

Aboard Delta Airlines Flight 5213 bound from Durham to St. Louis, the past and present collided. Anticipating my destination, I tweeted, “On my way to #FergusonOctober, with Michael Stewart on my mind. For me, this story begins with his NYC … Continue reading →

My essay from the Winter 2014 issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review finally became available via open access. This is my first effort at creative non-fiction; I enjoyed writing from a place in which history, memory, and the present collide. And … Continue reading →

Lisa Rudgers, Michigan’s Vice President for Global Communications, sat in on a faculty talk that Sam Bagenstos and I gave at the Law School titled “Yes, We’re on Twitter, and Here’s Why.” She liked it enough to write up a … Continue reading →

In the midst of the Civil War, who was a slave and who was free? When African Americans in Maryland asked this question 150 years ago, in August 1864, they engaged in a sophisticated analysis. The answer was to be … Continue reading →

I commented on Professor Frank Beaver’s Michigan Today article, urging that “No student at the University of Michigan should miss the opportunity to understand Griffith’s cinematic achievement. Still, no study of the film would be complete without also explaining its toxic … Continue reading →