Ashraf H. A. Rushdy's main field of research is in African American culture and history.  He has published work on the representation of slavery in African American culture and politics.  He has also written on the history of lynching in American culture. He has written on the practice of political apologies, and his most recent work is an exploration of the philosophical concepts of resentment and forgiveness.

His work raises a key question about what we can do with an unacceptable and violent past, that is, what we can do with the historical forces that forged the world we inherit.  He is interested in the range of options different artists, philosophers, and intellectuals have offered for confronting that past -- from those who dwell in the history we inherit, to those who resist it in different ways, to those who struggle to find some kind of redemption in and from it.