Jacob S. Dorman

While there are extensive literatures on enslaved African Muslims and 20th-century American Black Muslim movements, this project explores new ground by documenting the prevalence of Orientalist representations of Muslims, Arabs, and Moors in 19th-century American popular culture in forms such as sheet music, circus performances, minstrelsy and magic. African Americans not only consumed these images, but they helped to create them. For some, Orientalist scholarship and performance informed their critique of white supremacy and directly led to Black Nationalist and Black Muslim movements. By establishing the link between performance, religion, and politics, this study shows their interrelation and contends that religious ideas can spread in carnivalesque spaces, without being inauthentic.

The project documents housing discrimination in Nevada and how communities of color have nevertheless persisted. It will create a website and smartphone application using mapping, filmed oral histories, archival research, and historical narration. Pursuant to state law, it researches racist covenants, notifies homeowners, and uses local courts and county recorders to redact racist covenants. This project will answer: how was America’s racist housing system created from the “bottom-up,” that is, through the coordinated actions of thousands of government decision-makers and real estate professionals? What present-day legacies remain? Technological advances such as digitization of deeds make it now possible to document and interpret racist covenants for scholarly and general audiences.