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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > General
HONORABLE MENTION, HARRY SHAW AND KATRINA HAZZARD-DONALD AWARD FOR
OUTSTANDING WORK IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, GIVEN
BY THE POP CULTURE ASSOCIATION A view of transatlantic slavery's
afterlife and modern Blackness through the lens of age Although
more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon
Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as
children. Time and time again, excuses for police brutality and
aggression-particularly against Black children- concern the victim
"appearing" as a threat. But why and how is the perceived
"appearance" of Black persons so completely separated from common
perceptions of age and time? Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the
Time of Black Life posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a
central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with
regard to the history of transatlantic slavery. Focusing on Black
literary culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, Habiba Ibrahim examines how the history of transatlantic
slavery and the constitution of modern Blackness has been
reimagined through the embodiment of age. She argues that Black
age-through nearly four centuries of subjugation- has become
contingent, malleable, and suited for the needs of enslavement. As
a result, rather than the number of years lived or a developmental
life stage, Black age came to signify exchange value, historical
under-development, timelessness, and other fantasies borne out of
Black exclusion from the human. Ibrahim asks: What constitutes a
normative timeline of maturation for Black girls when "all the
women"-all the canonically feminized adults-"are white"? How does a
"slave" become a "man" when adulthood is foreclosed to Black
subjects of any gender? Black Age tracks the struggle between the
abuses of Black exclusion from Western humanism and the reclamation
of non-normative Black life, arguing that, if some of us are brave,
it is because we dare to live lives considered incomprehensible
within a schema of "human time."
In contrast to other literary genres, drama has received little
attention in southern studies, and women playwrights in general
receive less recognition than their male counterparts. In
Marginalized: Southern Women Playwrights Confront Race, Region, and
Gender, author Casey Kayser addresses these gaps by examining the
work of southern women playwrights, making the argument that
representations of the American South on stage are complicated by
difficulties of identity, genre, and region. Through analysis of
the dramatic texts, the rhetoric of reviews of productions, as well
as what the playwrights themselves have said about their plays and
productions, Kayser delineates these challenges and argues that
playwrights draw on various conscious strategies in response. These
strategies, evident in the work of such playwrights as Pearl
Cleage, Sandra Deer, Lillian Hellman, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman,
and Shay Youngblood, provide them with the opportunity to lead
audiences to reconsider monolithic understandings of northern and
southern regions and, ultimately, create new visions of the South.
Jennifer Griffiths's At Risk: Black Youth and the Creative
Imperative in the Post-Civil Rights Era focuses on literary
representations of adolescent artists as they develop strategies to
intervene against the stereotypes that threaten to limit their
horizons. The authors of the analyzed works capture and convey the
complex experience of the generation of young people growing up in
the era after the civil rights movement. Through creative
experiments, they carefully consider what it means to be narrowed
within the scope of a sociological "problem," all while trying to
expand the perspective of creative liberation. In short, they
explore what it means to be deemed an "at risk" youth. This book
looks at crucial works beginning in 1968, ranging from Sapphire's
Push and The Kid, Walter Dean Myers's Monster, and Dael
Orlandersmith's The Gimmick, to Bill Gunn's Johnnas. Each text
offers unique representations of Black gifted children, whose
creative processes help them to navigate simultaneous
hypervisibility and invisibility as racialized subjects. The book
addresses the ways that adolescents experience the perilous "at
risk" label, which threatens to narrow adolescent existence at a
developmental moment that requires an orientation toward
possibility and a freedom to experiment. Ultimately, At Risk
considers the distinct possibilities and challenges of the
post-civil rights era, and how the period allows for a more honest,
multilayered, and forthright depiction of Black youth subjectivity
against the adultification that forecloses potential.
In Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture,
author Stefanie K. Dunning considers both popular and literary
texts that range from Beyonce's Lemonade to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage
the Bones. These key works restage Black women in relation to
nature. Dunning argues that depictions of protagonists who return
to pastoral settings contest the violent and racist history that
incentivized Black disavowal of the natural world. Dunning offers
an original theoretical paradigm for thinking through race and
nature by showing that diverse constructions of nature in these
texts are deployed as a means of rescrambling the teleology of the
Western progress narrative. In a series of fascinating close
readings of contemporary Black texts, she reveals how a range of
artists evoke nature to suggest that interbeing with nature signals
a call for what Jared Sexton calls ""the dream of Black
Studies""-abolition. Black to Nature thus offers nuanced readings
that advance an emerging body of critical and creative work at the
nexus of Blackness, gender, and nature. Written in a clear,
approachable, and multilayered style that aims to be as poignant as
nature itself, the volume offers a unique combination of
theoretical breadth, narrative beauty, and broader perspective that
suggests it will be a foundational text in a new critical turn
towards framing nature within a cultural studies context.
During the past three decades there have been many studies of
transnational migration. Most of the scholarship has focused on one
side of the border, one area of labor incorporation, one generation
of migrants, and one gender. In this path-breaking book, Manuel
Barajas presents the first cross-national, comparative study to
examine a Mexican-origin community's experience with international
migration and transnationalism. He presents an extended case study
of the Xaripu community, with home bases in both Xaripu, Michoacan,
and Stockton, California, and elaborates how various forms of
colonialism, institutional biases, and emergent forms of domination
have shaped Xaripu labor migration, community formation, and family
experiences across the Mexican/U.S. border for over a century. Of
special interest are Barajas's formal and informal interviews
within the community, his examination of oral histories, and his
participant observation in several locations. Barajas asks, What
historical events have shaped the Xaripus' migration experiences?
How have Xaripus been incorporated into the U.S. labor market? How
have national inequalities affected their ability to form a
community across borders? And how have migration, settlement, and
employment experiences affected the family, especially gender
relationships, on both sides of the border?
Reveals the legacy of the train as a critical site of race in the
United States Despite the seeming supremacy of car culture in the
United States, the train has long been and continues to be a potent
symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. For
almost two centuries, the train has served as the literal and
symbolic vehicle for American national identity, manifest destiny,
and imperial ambitions. It's no surprise, then, that the train
continues to endure in depictions across literature, film, ad
music. The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role
that the railroad has played-and continues to play-in the formation
and perception of racial identity and difference in the United
States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as
the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple
registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an
invocation of and a depository for all manner of social,
historical, and political narratives. Lee demonstrates how, through
legacies of racialized labor and disenfranchisement-from the
Chinese American construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and
the depictions of Native Americans in landscape and advertising, to
the underground railroad and Jim Crow segregation-the train becomes
one of the exemplary spaces through which American cultural works
explore questions of racial subjectivity, community, and conflict.
By considering the train through various lenses, The Racial
Railroad tracks how racial formations and conflicts are constituted
in significant and contradictory ways by the spaces in which they
occur.
From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey,
Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith, Mississippi Zion: The Struggle
for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915 brings the voices and
experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a
history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard
Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in
Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic, social, and
political politics as a nonmajority racial group. At the same time,
Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout
the state during the same period. By examining southern African
American life mainly through Reconstruction and the civil rights
movement, historians have long mischaracterized African Americans
in Mississippi by linking their empowerment and progression solely
to periods of federal assistance. This book shatters that model and
reframes the postslavery era as a Liberation Era to examine how
African Americans pursued land, labor, education, politics,
community building, and progressive race relations to position
themselves as societal equals. Ashford salvages Attala County from
this historical misconception to give Mississippi a new history. He
examines African Americans as autonomous citizens whose liberation
agenda paralleled and intersected the vicious redemption agenda,
and he shows the struggle between Black and white citizens for
societal control. Mississippi Zion provides a fresh examination
into the impact of Black politics on creating the anti-Black
apparatuses that grounded the state's infamous Jim Crow society.
The use of photographs provides an accurate aesthetic of rural
African Americans and their connection to the historical moment.
This in-depth perspective captures the spectrum of African American
experiences that contradict and nuance how historians write,
analyze, and interpret southern African American life in the
postslavery era.
Communication plays a critical role in enhancing social, cultural,
and business relations. Research on media, language, and cultural
studies is fundamental in a globalized world because it illuminates
the experiences of various populations. There is a need to develop
effective communication strategies that will be able to address
both health and cultural issues globally. Dialectical Perspectives
on Media, Health, and Culture in Modern Africa is a collection of
innovative research on the impact of media and especially new media
on health and culture. While highlighting topics including civic
engagement, gender stereotypes, and interpersonal communication,
this book is ideally designed for university students,
multinational organizations, diplomats, expatriates, and
academicians seeking current research on how media, health, and
culture can be appropriated to overcome the challenges that plague
the world today.
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