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Professor Sklaroff teaches Cultural History in America, American History Since 1865, and The Historian's Craft. She has published articles on race relations and popular culture during World War II in American Quarterly (2004) and the Journal of American History ( December 2002) , where she regularly reviews books. Her first book, Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) describes the employment of state-sponsored cultural programs as a form of racial policy during the 1930s and 1940s. Here, Professor Sklaroff focuses on how radio, film, theatre, and other cultural arenas became central to the state’s institutional development, as officials recognized the growing need to publicly acknowledge African Americans.

Current Activities

Building on my interests in the relationship between culture and the construction of racial identity, I am beginning research on how race has become geographically demarcated in America. In particular, I am focusing on how people living outside of particular regions (the South, the West, certain urban areas) attach racial meaning to those places, and how the modern mass media facilitates this process. I am especially interested in the ways in which television allows people to internalize ideas about communities they have never seen in person, and how various forms of cultural imagery shift their regional affiliation over the course of the century. 

Press link http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book detail?title_id=1633

C-SPAN2 Book Interviews of Dr. Sklaroff's new book, "Black Culture and the New Deal:  The Quest of Civil Rights in the Roosevelt  Era"

Professor Sklaroff's c.v. is located here.