缅北禁地

Semester 2, Spring 2026 Office Hours: Tuesdays 11–1:00; Fridays 4–5:00.

Office: 1.39A Armstrong.

Ben researches and teaches 20th century US history, with a particular focus on the African American freedom struggle and post-1945 US and Southern history, plus oral and public history.

Before moving to 缅北禁地 in January 2010, he served as director of the Remembering African American Pittsburgh (RAP) oral history project, sponsored by the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) at Carnegie Mellon University.

I am a scholar of race relations in modern US history. My first book, The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City, was a community study of race relations and the Movement in Nashville, Tennessee. It focused on the evolving relationship between racial law and racial custom (as exhibited by a number of different settings within the city) and how this relationship conditioned the cultural attitudes of whites and African Americans. The book was awarded the Tennessee History Book Award (from the Tennessee Historical Commission & Tennessee Library Association) and the Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize (from the British Association of American Studies and the University of East Anglia). 

I also maintain ongoing interests in oral and public history, as well as the intersections between literature and history. My next monograph will draw from the oral histories collected during my tenure as director of the Remembering African American Pittsburgh (RAP) oral history project, and was supported with a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. I curated an international exhibition that blended historic photographs with oral history excerpts from RAP that ran in two cities in 2017. I also served as an international consulting editor for The Public Historian. I am also engaged on research on the 1960 sit-ins and African American authors of the late 20th century.

I welcome enquiries from prospective research students interested in modern US and African American history. 

I have taught variously at all stages on the 1960s in US history, the long black freedom struggle, oral history theory, methodology, and practicalities, historical skills, and more.

• Articles

  • Hunt M, Houston B, Ward B, Megoran N. . Journal of American Studies 2021, 55(2), 387-417.
  • Houston B. . Slavery & Abolition 2020, 41(1), 64-78.
  • Houston B. . Public Historian 2020, 42(2), 78-100.
  • Houston B. . Southern Cultures 2014, 20(4).
  • Houston B. . The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 2011, 4(2), 135-150.
  • Houston B. . Journal of Southern Religion 2007, 10, -.
  • Houston B. . Florida Historical Quarterly 2005, 83(3), 258-286.

• Authored Books

  • Houston B. . Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2026.
  • Trotter JW, Bush E, Glasco L, Houston B, Mitchell PP, Norman T, Ruck R, Young C. Black Pittsburgh: A New History. University of Michigan Press, 2026. In Preparation.
  • Houston B. . Georgia, USA: University of Georgia Press, 2012.

• Book Chapters

  • Houston B. . In: Leslie M. Harris; Clarence Lang; Rhonda Williams, and Joe William Trotter Jr, ed. Black Urban History at the Crossroads: Race and Place in the American City. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024, pp.209-223.
  • Houston B. . In: Street J; Lozano HK, ed. The Shadow of Selma. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2018, pp.37-57.
  • Houston B. . In: Kilbride, D.; Frank, L.T, ed. Southern Character: Essays in Honor of Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2011, pp.160-177.