My areas of interest and research publications are African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora (the migration of African American jazz musicians to France, Germany, England, Austria, China, Russia, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and other locales from the beginning of the 20th century), Nubia & Egypt from the Old Kingdom to the Meroitic Period, Egyptology, and Linguistics:

2006 “Aimé Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, and the Concept of Black Aesthetics.” Reevaluating the Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. James L. Conyers, Jr. Editor, The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Wales, United Kingdom (ISBN: 0-7734-5954-5).

2006 Nubia & Egypt: From Prehistory to the Meroitic Period. The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Wales, United Kingdom, in press).

2005 “Egyptology.” The Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Dr. James Birx Editor, Sage Publications (ISBN: 0-7619-3029-9).

2003 African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora. The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Wales, United Kingdom (ISBN: 0-7734-6857-9).

2003 “The Interaction Sphere of Nubia and Egypt: From the Old Kingdom to the Meroitic Period.” Afrocentricity and the Academy, James L. Conyers, Jr. Editor, McFarland & Co. Inc. Publishers, Jefferson, NC and London (ISBN: 0-7864-1542-8).

2001 “Jazz Musicians in Postwar Europe & Japan.” African American Jazz & Rap, James l. Conyers, Jr. Editor, McFarland & Company Publishers, Jefferson, NC and London (ISBN: 0-7864-0828-6).

2001 “Jazz Musicians in Europe: 1919-1945.” Civil Rights, Black Arts, and the Black Power Movements in America, James L. Conyers, Jr. Editor, Ashgate Publishing, United Kingdom (ISBN: 0-7546-1806-4).

1997 Robert A. Benfer Jr., N. Louanna Furbee, Kelly Maynard,Sarah Quick, and Larry Ross, and J. Jerome Smith. "The Emergence of Color Cognition from Color Perception." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6(2):223-240.

1995 N. Louanna Furbee, Kelley Maynard, Sarah Quick, Larry Ross, and J. Jerome Smith. “Salience Counts: A Domain Analysis of English Color Terms.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 5(2):203-216.

African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora is a book that examines the migration of Jazz Musicians to France, Germany, England, Holland, Russia, China, Japan, Turkey, Morocco, and other countries from the end of World War I to the present. These musicians found that the Jim Crow Laws were not universal, and they were hailed as the epitome of high culture all over the world. For example, soprano saxophone virtuoso Sidney Bechet played at England's Buckingham Palace in 1919, and he fraternized with King George V who remarked to Bechet that his favorite song of the evening was the Characteristic Blues. At the same time, a new wave of violence against African Americans was taking place: it is known as The Red Summer of 1919 (see http://www.pbs.org).

The cultural impact that these musicians had abroad was staggering; today, it is somewhat difficult to fathom that people willingly risked their lives by listening to African American jazz on the radio, but this was commonplace in Nazi Germany and a rich jazz record smuggling trade went on in the record stores. Labels from Johann Sebastian Bach albums were often placed on coveted Duke Ellington or Count Basie albums, while the Luftwaffe's pilots tuned in the BBC to listen to "good" jazz when they were supposed to be bombing the radio tower: somehow, they never hit the tower. Thus, even in one of the most extremely repressive periods in modern history, jazz music brought people at both extremes together as Nazi officers printed and distributed newsletters at the Russian Front detailing where saxophonist Benny Carter would be playing. The extent to which jazz has influenced global politics and culture over time is remarkable, and African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora unifies the disparate strands of this understudied phenomenon.