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Washington State University
History | Marlene Gaynair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilson-Short Hall 313
509-335-8886
marlene.gaynair@wsu.edu

Education

Ph.D., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, 2021
M.A., York University, 2014
B.A. Spec. Hons., York University, 2013

About

Dr. Marlene Gaynair is currently a social and cultural historian of the modern Black Atlantic at Washington State University. She specializes in the histories of the United States, Canada, and British Caribbean during the long twentieth century. Her research interests cover popular culture, identity, citizenship, diasporas, public memory, immigration, transnational studies, and urban histories and spaces.

She is also the architect of “Islands in the North,” an ongoing digital exhibit which (re) creates Black cultural and spatial identities in Toronto. She continues to engage in digital histories and humanities to explore other dimensions of historical scholarship and public engagement.

She is currently working on her book manuscript, which is a transnational study of Jamaicans in Canada, the United States, and the Black Atlantic after Emancipation.

Academic and Research Interests

Publications

“A Riot Is The Language Of The Unheard: Centering Black Caribbean Voices in Crown Heights.”  Journal of American Ethnic History (Forthcoming).

“’She Wiggled Her Body In The Most Suggestive And Obscene Manner’: Sexuality And Respectability In The West Indian Labor Day Parade.” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, April 27, 2021.

“Black Women Were Vital to the UK’s Black Power Movement Even Though Guerrilla Doesn’t Show It.” EBONY Magazine, April 12, 2017.

Review of David K. Wiggins, Kevin B. Witherspoon, and Mark Dyreson. Black Mercuries: African American Athletes, Race, and the Modern Olympic Games. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023. Journal of Sport History (Forthcoming).

Review of Marcia Chatelain, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. “Marcia Chatelain. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2020. 336 pp. ISBN 978-1-63149-394-2 $28.95 (cloth).” Enterprise & Society, Summer 2022.

Review of Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands. “Stuart Hall: ‘Familiar Stranger’ of the Black Atlantic.” Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, July 6, 2018.