Bryan Wagner

Bryan Wagner is an Associate Professor in the English Department at UC Berkeley. He received a PhD in English from the University of Virginia before coming to Berkeley in 2002. His research focuses on African American expression in the context of slavery and its aftermath, and he has secondary interests in legal history and popular music. He has published Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2009) and The Tar Baby: A Global History (Princeton University Press, 2017). A book on The Wild Tchoupitoulas—a landmark album of processional call-and-response music arranged as electric funk—is forthcoming in the 33 1/3 Series from Bloomsbury. A critical edition, The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé: The Fugitive Slave Who Fought the Law, Ruled the Swamp, Danced the Bamboula, Invented Jazz, and Died for Love, is forthcoming from LSU Press. Current research includes a collaborative cartographic digital archive, Louisiana Slave Conspiracies, and a multimedia project on the political culture of Reconstruction.