Professor of Black Studies Erica Ball was recently elected to the American Antiquarian Society, a 212-year-old research library and community which has included 14 U.S. presidents and 75 Pulitzer Prize winners. Ball is the author of several books primarily focusing on African American history and received the Linda and Tod White Teaching Prize in 2021. Ball said the society holds many primary resources relevant to that work.
“This particular organization has an extraordinary collection in early American print culture, and this includes early African American newspapers from the 19th century,” Ball said. “They have so many items, it’s like being a kid in a candy store.”
Ball said her research focuses primarily on how Black thinkers and artists influence global perspectives on important and contentious topics such as slavery.
“In the past, I’ve used early 19th century African American newspapers pretty heavily in my research, but I’ve used the digitized copies that are on microfilm and available in the Schomburg Center,” Ball said. “The American Antiquarian Society has the actual print copies, which is extraordinary.”
Professors James Ford and Sharla Fett, both colleagues of Ball, said they have high praise for her as a teacher and an academic. Fett said she has been working with Ball since she began her tenure here at Occidental, as much of their work overlaps in the same historical circles.
“I think she has this kind of quiet brilliance and clarity that makes her able to produce really important scholarship and at the same time communicate those ideas in the classroom in this compelling way that students get super excited about,” Fett said.
Ford has been working with Ball since 2016 and said that she provides a unique insight into their shared fields.
“She is the most committed to acknowledging the nuances that history brings to often complicate the theories that we wish explained everything,” Ford said. “She also stands out because she has been so committed to recovering and reinterpreting historical moments and historical figures that we think we were already familiar with.”
Ford said Ball was central to the creation of the Black Studies curriculum.
“She is also very skilled in curriculum building and administration,” Fett said “She played a huge role in working through some of the challenges of bringing a whole new department in.”
Fett and Ford both said they were very glad that Ball was receiving recognition for the excellent work that she has done.
“I’m glad that she’s getting the recognition that she’s earned,” Ford said.
Professor Ball is working on a new book titled “Slavery in the American Imagination.” Ball said the book will focus on the portrayal of slavery in American pop culture with a particular emphasis on the different ways people ascribe meaning to it.
“The meaning of slavery and the history of slavery was something that was always hotly contested over the course of the 20th century,” Ball said. “For Black folks, it’s a family history with deep meaning, but for other folks, slavery as a term can be used as a political metaphor.”
Ford said Ball’s work is important, because it revitalizes focus on figures in African American culture that have been taken for granted.
“She’s looking back at these events, at these popular figures who for many years were kind of taken for granted as being a part of Black American or Black diasporic culture,” Ford said. “Professor Ball is reminding us in ways that future generations will be able to recall.”
Ball said becoming a member of American Antiquarian Society is meaningful and not something she expected.
“I’m delighted and deeply honored to have been elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society,” Ball said.
Contact Noah Emmitt at emmitt@oxy.edu
