Gender and Sexuality Studies

Biography

Glen Anthony Harris received his Ph.D. from Florida State University and his MA and BA degrees from North Carolina Central University. He has taught at North Carolina Central University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Florida A&M University before joining UNCW's history department in 2002.

He is the author of the following books:
Social Justice and Liberation Struggles: The Photojournalist and Public Relations Career of Alexander McAllister Rivera Jr., (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, May 2023). Alexander Rivera Jr.  was a prolific photojournalist and a foremost public relations specialist. Well-known for his long association with North Carolina Central University, his livelihood and professional career extended well beyond Durham, North Carolina. Rivera Jr. not only created a body of work that preserved critical aspects of African American and American history on the local, state, national, and international levels, he also personified the philosophies of confidentiality and anonymity essential in the field of public relations to maneuver and operate in the complex environment of national and state politics. 
The Ocean Hill-Brownsville Conflict: Intellectual Struggles between Blacks and Jews at Mid-Century, (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2012) which examines the role that certain black and Jewish writers and intellectuals played in the characterization of black-Jewish relations in relations from 1900 to the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville school conflict.
In addition, his most recent publications are:
The Crisis of Harold Cruse and Adolph Reed: A Perspective on the American Letter’s Tradition, Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities, Volume 1, No. 1: 99-110 (January 2020).
How does it Feel to be a Problem: Reflections on the Trayvon Martin Case and the American Idea, in The Trayvon Martin in US: An American Tragedy. Emmanuel Harris II and Antonio Tillis, Eds. Peter Lang Publishing. (Spring 2015).
He is currently working on the following project:
An article length examination of Rivera's international trip to Accra, Ghana in 1957: The Politics of Liberation: Alexander Rivera, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the African Independence Movement.
Reintroducing Alex Rivera to the historical record, whose photojournalistic work on this period has been ignored or underappreciated by historians of the African American press and more generally by historians of the black past, provides African Americans a more nuance understanding of the African Independence Movement, of individual African countries, and on the meaning and evolution of the term African American.