Faculty Publications
A
Allen, Shaonta' E. 2023. "Is the Black Church Dead? Religious Resilience and the Contemporary Functions of Black Christianity." Religions
B
West Africa's Women of God: Alinesitoué and the Diola Prophetic Tradition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, (November 2016). Finalist for Albert J. Raboteau Prize in Africana Religions.
Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Winner of the American Academy of Religion Award, "Best First Book in the History of Religions," 2000.
C
SINGLE-AUTHORED BOOKS
Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2014). Foreword by Richard Leppert
Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good (University of Michigan Press, 2016). Foreword by Susan McClary.
Loving Music Till It Hurts (Oxford University Press, 2019).
EDITED VOLUMES
Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press, ed. with Greg Barz, 2019).
A Cultural History of Music in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Academic, ed. with Danielle Fosler-Lussier).
ARTICLES
Visit www.willxcheng.com
Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women's Discourses of the Female Body. (University of Nebraska Press, 2019.)
E
"The Labial Politics of Stella Nyanzi." Meridians: race, feminism, transnationalism 24.2 (2025): 507–531.
K
My publications include both articles and books (monographs & edited volumes):
#You Know You're Black in France When...: The Fact of Everyday Antiblackness (MIT Press)
--Selected as a 2023 Choice Pick by the Association of College and Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association)
--Shortlisted for the 2023 American Library in Paris Book Award
Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness (co-edited, Duke University Press)
Black Europe and the African Diaspora (co-edited, University of Illinois Press)
Muslim Girls and the Other France: Race, Identity Politics, and Social Exclusion (Indiana University Press)
My current book project, Real to Reel: Racialized Representations and French Banlieue Cinéma, takes up the above questions as they unfold in French cinema and France's film industry.
Selected Articles and Other Publications
"Why are French Authorities acknowledging racial profiling but doing nothing about it?" Contexts (Sociology for the Public), January 12, 2024
"Race," in Keywords for African American Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2018): 163-167
"Au Nègre Joyeux: Everyday Anti-blackness Guised as Public Art," Nka: The Journal of Contemporary African Art (2016): 52-58
"Review of Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe" by Michael McEachrane (ed), The Black Scholar 46, no. 1 (2016): 77-80
"Racial Profiling and the 'French Exception.'" French Cultural Studies, 24, no. 2 (2013): 231-242
"Euzhan Palcy: Creative Dissent, Artistic Reckoning—An Interview by Trica Danielle Keaton," Palimpsest (2012): 116-134
"Racial Profiling: France and the U.S." (part 1 and part 2), Racism Review, 2012
"The Defiant One: Euzhan Palcy," Feminist Wire, 2011
"The Politics of Race-Blindness: (Anti)blackness and Category Blindness in Contemporary France," Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 7, no.1 (2010): 103-131
"'Black (American) Paris' and the 'Other France': The Race Question and Questioning Solidarity," In Black Europe and the African Diaspora, eds. D. Clark Hine, T. Keaton, and S. Small, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009)
"Black Paris/Paris Noir," in Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, (Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO Press/Greenwood Publishing, 2008): 187-188
"Review of Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image by Bennetta Jules-Rosette," Journal of American Studies, 42, no. 2 (2008): 2
"Arrogant Assimilationism: National Identity Politics and African Origin Muslim Girls in the Other France," Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36, no. 4 (2005): 405-423
"Un Regard Afro-américain sur une 'Cité' de la Banlieue Parisienne : Les Courtillières," Agone: Sociologie, Histoire & Politique, 29-30 (2003) : 121-134
"Review of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World by Manthia Diawara," African Studies Review, 46, no 3 (2003): 175-176
"Muslim Girls and the 'Other France': An Examination of Identity Construction," Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 5, no. 1 (1999): 47-64
SELECTED WORKS, DIRECTING
2024 Liberation
2023 Crossing Over
2022 By Water
2017 Practice
2017 An Exercise in Transfiguration
2017 The Offering
2017 Revelations
2016 El Nazareno, the Black Christ of Portobello
2015 Macarrão
2010 La Receta
2009 My Name is Ani Acta
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY/CINEMATOGRAPHY/CAMERA OPERATION CREDITS
2022 Geechee Kunda – Co-Cinematographer
2018 Bridge/Refrain – Cinematographer, Colorist
2019 Nike Until We All Win (2 commercials, 3 minutes each) – Camera Operator
2017 Palenque – Production Team Co Sound and-Cinematographer
2017 The Offering – Cinematographer
2016 El Nazareno, the Black Christ of Portobello – Cinematographer
2015 All Men are Flowers – Cinematographer
2015 Maria Moderne – Director of Photography
2015 Special Moments with Oksana – Director of Photography
2014 Bound: Africans versus African Americans (feature.) – Co-Cinematographer
2012 Little Creatures – Director of Photography
M
"Indigenous Raiding, Captive-Taking, and the Politics of Maritime Violence in the Long Sixteenth-Century Lesser Antilles." The Hispanic American Historical Review (In Press).
"Triangular Voyages: Locating the Transnational Caribbean Woman in Paule Marshall's 'To Da-duh, in Memoriam.'" Special Issue Editor Jennifer Williams. Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, (Fall 2017).
N
Shaping the Future of African American Film: Color-Coded Economics and the Story Behind the Numbers, Rutgers University Press, 2014
2021: Reimagining Social Medicine from the South, Abigail H. Neely. Duke University Press.
R
The Fixers: Devolution, Development, and Civil Society in Newark, 1960-1990. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
S
“Family and History Mix during a Fulbright Year: A personal and intellectual Journey in Ghana,” Perspectives Daily, (September 2021) in Perspectives on History, Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association
“Connecting decolonization in Africa and the US Civil Rights Movement,” World History Project, Bill Gates Foundation, (Summer 2020)
“Reframing Yaa Asantewaa through the Shifting Paradigms of African Historiography,” in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, ed. Janell C. Hobson, (Routledge, 2021), 236-244.
"Women’s International Alliances in an Emergent Ghana." Journal of West African History, 4:1 (2018), 27-56.
“The Ghana Trades Union Congress and the Politics of International Labor Alliances, 1957–1971.” International Review of Social History, 62:2 (2017), 191-213.
“Decolonization, Cold War Dynamics and Nation Building in Ghana-Asia Relations: 1957- 1966.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 49:1 (2016), 235-253.
The Politics of Chieftaincy: Authority and Property in Colonial Ghana, 1920-1950 (University of Rochester Press, Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Series, 2014).
“The Politics of Land and Urban Space in Colonial Accra,” History in Africa, 39 (2012): 293-329.