The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade

The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade, edited by Kimberly R. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, is a holistic analysis of the decade that focuses on major turning points and developments in literature, entertainment, politics, and social experimentation. This analysis ultimately presents the 1980s as a significant phenomenon in the American landscape. The 1980s is a groundbreaking and stand-alone introductory volume that is unapologetically interdisciplinary in nature and encourages students to explore topics of the decade often overlooked or grouped together with other, more memorable decades such as the 1920s or 1960s.

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson currently serves as the Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Reynaldo is currently the Executive Director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), an international network of artists, intellectuals, creatives, and activists. He is the co-editor of the following anthologies and journals, Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness and The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design (2015, 2019), Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (2018), Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, a special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), and "When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity" (The Journal of Futures Studies, 2019). He is also the author of numerous articles on Africana Studies and Communication studies and helped conceive the joint BSAM and NY LIVE Arts Curating the End of the World online exhibitions (2020-2021). He has presented papers in areas of communications, Africana studies, Afrofuturism, and critical theory in the US and abroad.

Stephen McVeigh is Lecturer in War & Society and Academic Director of the BA and MA War & Society programmes at Swansea University, UK.

Scott A. Merriman is a lecturer in history at Troy University, USA. He has authored and edited more than a dozen books, including Religion and the Law in America: An Encyclopedia of Personal Belief and Public Policy (2007).

Caryn E. Neumann, PhD, teaches at Miami University of Ohio Regionals, USA.

James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University.