Edwin David Aponte
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195167979
- eISBN:
- 9780199784981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019516797X.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This chapter explores some pedagogical challenges, responses to, and strategies for the inclusion of African and African American cultural perspectives into the required core curriculum courses at a ...
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This chapter explores some pedagogical challenges, responses to, and strategies for the inclusion of African and African American cultural perspectives into the required core curriculum courses at a graduate theological seminary. This chapter represents the author's longstanding personal interest in African and African American religions and cultures — an interest that was deepened through participation in the workshop “Mining the Motherlode of African American Religious Life”. This personal commitment is used to develop seminary courses that draw on African American religious life. In the teaching context, part of the challenge of rethinking the core curriculum lies in the particular nature of theological education.Less
This chapter explores some pedagogical challenges, responses to, and strategies for the inclusion of African and African American cultural perspectives into the required core curriculum courses at a graduate theological seminary. This chapter represents the author's longstanding personal interest in African and African American religions and cultures — an interest that was deepened through participation in the workshop “Mining the Motherlode of African American Religious Life”. This personal commitment is used to develop seminary courses that draw on African American religious life. In the teaching context, part of the challenge of rethinking the core curriculum lies in the particular nature of theological education.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the ...
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This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.Less
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.
Marlene L. Daut
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381847
- eISBN:
- 9781781382394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381847.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter is all about ‘Theresa; a Haytien Tale’ (1828), a short story that was serialized and published anonymously in the first African American newspaper Freedom’s Journal, and is now ...
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This chapter is all about ‘Theresa; a Haytien Tale’ (1828), a short story that was serialized and published anonymously in the first African American newspaper Freedom’s Journal, and is now considered to be the first African American short story. The author argues that this brief text provides an even more redemptive role for women of color. ‘Theresa’ imagines women as central to the liberation of the colony through their unfailing and unquestioning allegiance to the revolutionary cause. ‘Theresa’ is therefore not buttressed by pseudoscientific claims of the innate savagery or hyper-sexuality of “black” women, but instead unequivocally celebrates their ability to contribute to slave rebellions, imagining a hitherto denied active role for women of color in the events of the Haitian Revolution.Less
This chapter is all about ‘Theresa; a Haytien Tale’ (1828), a short story that was serialized and published anonymously in the first African American newspaper Freedom’s Journal, and is now considered to be the first African American short story. The author argues that this brief text provides an even more redemptive role for women of color. ‘Theresa’ imagines women as central to the liberation of the colony through their unfailing and unquestioning allegiance to the revolutionary cause. ‘Theresa’ is therefore not buttressed by pseudoscientific claims of the innate savagery or hyper-sexuality of “black” women, but instead unequivocally celebrates their ability to contribute to slave rebellions, imagining a hitherto denied active role for women of color in the events of the Haitian Revolution.
Travis A. Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520270442
- eISBN:
- 9780520951921
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520270442.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter examines some of the meanings that emerge from jazz performance based on statements by musicians regarding their approaches to musical events and their interpretation and evaluation. ...
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This chapter examines some of the meanings that emerge from jazz performance based on statements by musicians regarding their approaches to musical events and their interpretation and evaluation. Through identification of their common concerns, it proposes that they have developed and operate within the parameters of a set of normative and evaluative criteria called a “blues aesthetic.” In defining that aesthetic, the chapter explores its foundations in African American culture and other, parallel and competing, discourses and aesthetic formations.Less
This chapter examines some of the meanings that emerge from jazz performance based on statements by musicians regarding their approaches to musical events and their interpretation and evaluation. Through identification of their common concerns, it proposes that they have developed and operate within the parameters of a set of normative and evaluative criteria called a “blues aesthetic.” In defining that aesthetic, the chapter explores its foundations in African American culture and other, parallel and competing, discourses and aesthetic formations.
Black Hawk Hancock
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226043074
- eISBN:
- 9780226043241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226043241.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter examines the history of the Lindy Hop and what its revival says about the ongoing story of our struggles with “American” cultural identity. It relates the Lindy Hop scene to the social ...
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This chapter examines the history of the Lindy Hop and what its revival says about the ongoing story of our struggles with “American” cultural identity. It relates the Lindy Hop scene to the social dance world of Steppin' in order to understand the Lindy Hop in relation to race, identity, and contemporary American society. It discusses the need to shift the study of race and ethnicity back onto whiteness and the ways in which the privileges of whiteness are institutionalized and naturalized; Ralph Ellison's thoughts on African American culture; and the carnal sociology approach. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This chapter examines the history of the Lindy Hop and what its revival says about the ongoing story of our struggles with “American” cultural identity. It relates the Lindy Hop scene to the social dance world of Steppin' in order to understand the Lindy Hop in relation to race, identity, and contemporary American society. It discusses the need to shift the study of race and ethnicity back onto whiteness and the ways in which the privileges of whiteness are institutionalized and naturalized; Ralph Ellison's thoughts on African American culture; and the carnal sociology approach. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Garrett Albert Duncan
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098114
- eISBN:
- 9789882206830
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098114.003.0009
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter provides a critical account of African American language research discourse and cultural imperialism in the U.S. It analyzes the discourses that underlie research on African American ...
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This chapter provides a critical account of African American language research discourse and cultural imperialism in the U.S. It analyzes the discourses that underlie research on African American language in the U.S. that contribute to its contested meanings in the public sphere. It also highlights the 1996 resolution of the Oakland Unified School District in California that affirmed the role of African American culture and language in the education of Afro-American students.Less
This chapter provides a critical account of African American language research discourse and cultural imperialism in the U.S. It analyzes the discourses that underlie research on African American language in the U.S. that contribute to its contested meanings in the public sphere. It also highlights the 1996 resolution of the Oakland Unified School District in California that affirmed the role of African American culture and language in the education of Afro-American students.
Black Hawk Hancock
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226043074
- eISBN:
- 9780226043241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226043241.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter recounts the author's engagement with the Steppin' scene in Chicago and explores how cultural practice enables the contestation and transgression of racial categories. This approach ...
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This chapter recounts the author's engagement with the Steppin' scene in Chicago and explores how cultural practice enables the contestation and transgression of racial categories. This approach presents an alternative model for explaining racial identity, grounded in the competencies and embodied knowledge that one enacts in practice, which opens up new antiessentialist possibilities for theorizing race and an antiracist politics based in cultural labor. In doing so, the chapter highlights the nuances of subcultures within the larger African American community by showing the internal differences that exemplify the complexity of discussing a singular African American community in relation to any particular cultural form.Less
This chapter recounts the author's engagement with the Steppin' scene in Chicago and explores how cultural practice enables the contestation and transgression of racial categories. This approach presents an alternative model for explaining racial identity, grounded in the competencies and embodied knowledge that one enacts in practice, which opens up new antiessentialist possibilities for theorizing race and an antiracist politics based in cultural labor. In doing so, the chapter highlights the nuances of subcultures within the larger African American community by showing the internal differences that exemplify the complexity of discussing a singular African American community in relation to any particular cultural form.
Donald H. Matthews
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199963997
- eISBN:
- 9780190258412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199963997.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter examines the theology of the African American spirituals from a postmodern perspective. It considers how racism in the United States has caused African American religious interpretation ...
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This chapter examines the theology of the African American spirituals from a postmodern perspective. It considers how racism in the United States has caused African American religious interpretation to undergo a dialectical process, resulting in a distorted perception of African Americans by African American theologians and in a cultural-structural dialectic nature of African American religion. It also discusses the implicit meanings in black theology as found in the spirituals by relating them to questions of methodology in the interpretation of African American religion and culture.Less
This chapter examines the theology of the African American spirituals from a postmodern perspective. It considers how racism in the United States has caused African American religious interpretation to undergo a dialectical process, resulting in a distorted perception of African Americans by African American theologians and in a cultural-structural dialectic nature of African American religion. It also discusses the implicit meanings in black theology as found in the spirituals by relating them to questions of methodology in the interpretation of African American religion and culture.
Donal Harris
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231177726
- eISBN:
- 9780231541343
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231177726.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Jessie Fauset’s interest in new printing technologies – multigraphs, linotypes, and halftone reproduction – are crucial for understanding the political and aesthetic missions of ...
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W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Jessie Fauset’s interest in new printing technologies – multigraphs, linotypes, and halftone reproduction – are crucial for understanding the political and aesthetic missions of The Crisis. They envision the magazine as both constituting and creating an archive of a national African American intellectual community; at the same time Du Bois' essays, Fauset's fiction, and Frank Walt's illustrations thematize the technological and political roadblocks for establishing a recognizably black print culture in the 1910s and 1920s.Less
W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Jessie Fauset’s interest in new printing technologies – multigraphs, linotypes, and halftone reproduction – are crucial for understanding the political and aesthetic missions of The Crisis. They envision the magazine as both constituting and creating an archive of a national African American intellectual community; at the same time Du Bois' essays, Fauset's fiction, and Frank Walt's illustrations thematize the technological and political roadblocks for establishing a recognizably black print culture in the 1910s and 1920s.
Stephanie Brown
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604739732
- eISBN:
- 9781604739749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604739732.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but ...
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This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but pry open a space in the critical models available for theorizing postwar African American culture. The end of the Cold War provided cultural historians with both a sense of closure for a long-standing global narrative and a rich source of archival materials from the former Soviet Union and its satellites. The focus has often been on the work of white writers, while black musicians and visual artists have stood in for the cultural production of African Americans more generally. Ralph Ellison provides the single exception.Less
This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but pry open a space in the critical models available for theorizing postwar African American culture. The end of the Cold War provided cultural historians with both a sense of closure for a long-standing global narrative and a rich source of archival materials from the former Soviet Union and its satellites. The focus has often been on the work of white writers, while black musicians and visual artists have stood in for the cultural production of African Americans more generally. Ralph Ellison provides the single exception.
Donald H. Matthews
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199963997
- eISBN:
- 9780190258412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199963997.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter examines black literary criticism in relation to narrative hermeneutics. It first looks at the factors that contributed to the rise of black literary criticism, including African ...
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This chapter examines black literary criticism in relation to narrative hermeneutics. It first looks at the factors that contributed to the rise of black literary criticism, including African American culture and the historical forces that drove the development of black theology - namely, the civil rights and black power movements. It then considers Stephen Henderson's suggestion that the interpretive process for black literary criticism proceeds according to the requirements of three critical categories: the themes present in black literature; structural analysis as an aspect of black narration; and saturation, or the communication of blackness in a given situation and a sense of fidelity to the observed and intuited truth of the black experience. It also explores the difficulties in the development of a black narrative theory by focusing on the ideas of Houston Baker Jr. and Henry Louis Gates Jr. More specifically, it analyzes Baker's “vernacular” theory of black literary criticism and his interpretation of the slave narratives in comparison with Gates's hermeneutic of African American literature and his recognition of the importance of religion in the interpretation of African American culture.Less
This chapter examines black literary criticism in relation to narrative hermeneutics. It first looks at the factors that contributed to the rise of black literary criticism, including African American culture and the historical forces that drove the development of black theology - namely, the civil rights and black power movements. It then considers Stephen Henderson's suggestion that the interpretive process for black literary criticism proceeds according to the requirements of three critical categories: the themes present in black literature; structural analysis as an aspect of black narration; and saturation, or the communication of blackness in a given situation and a sense of fidelity to the observed and intuited truth of the black experience. It also explores the difficulties in the development of a black narrative theory by focusing on the ideas of Houston Baker Jr. and Henry Louis Gates Jr. More specifically, it analyzes Baker's “vernacular” theory of black literary criticism and his interpretation of the slave narratives in comparison with Gates's hermeneutic of African American literature and his recognition of the importance of religion in the interpretation of African American culture.
Mark P. Leone
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520244504
- eISBN:
- 9780520931893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520244504.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter shows what African American culture in Annapolis teaches us about the conditions of the Americans, and attempts to explain how the African American culture sheds light on slavery, ...
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This chapter shows what African American culture in Annapolis teaches us about the conditions of the Americans, and attempts to explain how the African American culture sheds light on slavery, racism, work, equality, and the level to which African Americans were within or lived beyond the ideology of individualism. It shows the challenges posed by archaeology to capitalism, and ends with a discussion of the problem of the individual who acts.Less
This chapter shows what African American culture in Annapolis teaches us about the conditions of the Americans, and attempts to explain how the African American culture sheds light on slavery, racism, work, equality, and the level to which African Americans were within or lived beyond the ideology of individualism. It shows the challenges posed by archaeology to capitalism, and ends with a discussion of the problem of the individual who acts.
Thomas F. DeFrantz
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195301717
- eISBN:
- 9780199850648
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301717.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter examines Revelations, the first major choreographic masterpiece of Alvin Ailey. When Ailey choreographed this dance in 1960 it was intended to be the second part of an evening-length ...
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This chapter examines Revelations, the first major choreographic masterpiece of Alvin Ailey. When Ailey choreographed this dance in 1960 it was intended to be the second part of an evening-length survey of African American music that would show the growth and reach of black culture. He chose the spirituals, or sorrow songs, for this dance because it was designed to suggest a chronological spectrum of black religious music that would map out rural southern spirituality onto the dance concert stage.Less
This chapter examines Revelations, the first major choreographic masterpiece of Alvin Ailey. When Ailey choreographed this dance in 1960 it was intended to be the second part of an evening-length survey of African American music that would show the growth and reach of black culture. He chose the spirituals, or sorrow songs, for this dance because it was designed to suggest a chronological spectrum of black religious music that would map out rural southern spirituality onto the dance concert stage.
Ian Rocksborough-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041662
- eISBN:
- 9780252050336
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041662.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The third chapter of this book shifts to address the question of nationalism and its historically contingent forms in urban America. This chapter specifically looks at how black nationalism in ...
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The third chapter of this book shifts to address the question of nationalism and its historically contingent forms in urban America. This chapter specifically looks at how black nationalism in Chicago became a complex phenomenon that drew on older traditions and modalities of black politics through the local organizations and activists that challenged simple dichotomies of integration and separatism, militancy and accommodation. A primary focus in the chapter examines the establishment of the Afro-American Heritage Foundation (AAHA) in 1958 and its subsequent public-history efforts—notably the promotion of Negro History Week in the city through the early 1960s and into the Black Power 1960s.Less
The third chapter of this book shifts to address the question of nationalism and its historically contingent forms in urban America. This chapter specifically looks at how black nationalism in Chicago became a complex phenomenon that drew on older traditions and modalities of black politics through the local organizations and activists that challenged simple dichotomies of integration and separatism, militancy and accommodation. A primary focus in the chapter examines the establishment of the Afro-American Heritage Foundation (AAHA) in 1958 and its subsequent public-history efforts—notably the promotion of Negro History Week in the city through the early 1960s and into the Black Power 1960s.
Erica R. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675456
- eISBN:
- 9781452947488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675456.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter situates the twentieth-century cultural complex of black charismatic leadership within the making of post-Reconstruction black political culture. In African American political culture ...
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This chapter situates the twentieth-century cultural complex of black charismatic leadership within the making of post-Reconstruction black political culture. In African American political culture since the Reconstruction, charismatic leadership can be described as a fraught discursive compact—a narrative and performative regime—that has had to contend repeatedly with the contestations of performing artists, writers, social critics, and activists. Charisma, as a political fiction or ideal, forms assumptions about authority and identity that structures how political mobilization is conceived and enacted. This fiction is staged in real time and in media playback: its narrative thread is woven into the fabric of what might be called the charismatic scenario, which has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries taken form in ways as diverse as the United Negro Improvement Association parades, the Million Man and Millions More marches, and the various scenes that make up the historical imaginary of the civil rights and Black Power movements.Less
This chapter situates the twentieth-century cultural complex of black charismatic leadership within the making of post-Reconstruction black political culture. In African American political culture since the Reconstruction, charismatic leadership can be described as a fraught discursive compact—a narrative and performative regime—that has had to contend repeatedly with the contestations of performing artists, writers, social critics, and activists. Charisma, as a political fiction or ideal, forms assumptions about authority and identity that structures how political mobilization is conceived and enacted. This fiction is staged in real time and in media playback: its narrative thread is woven into the fabric of what might be called the charismatic scenario, which has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries taken form in ways as diverse as the United Negro Improvement Association parades, the Million Man and Millions More marches, and the various scenes that make up the historical imaginary of the civil rights and Black Power movements.
Yvonne P. Chireau
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520209879
- eISBN:
- 9780520940277
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520209879.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter is an introduction to a book that examines the role of black magic and religion in the African American spirituality. It begins by defining magic and religion, and explains that, in some ...
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This chapter is an introduction to a book that examines the role of black magic and religion in the African American spirituality. It begins by defining magic and religion, and explains that, in some African American spiritual traditions, ideas about magical and religious practice can enclose identical experiences. The study examines a range of African American spiritual traditions such as Conjure, Hoodoo, and root working, and contrasts them with the official doctrines of institutionalized religion: Protestant Christianity. African Americans have resignified the supernatural practices as religion, and it can be concluded that African American religion is not always distinct from what others call magic. Instead, these are complementary categories, and they have historically exhibited complementary forms in African American culture.Less
This chapter is an introduction to a book that examines the role of black magic and religion in the African American spirituality. It begins by defining magic and religion, and explains that, in some African American spiritual traditions, ideas about magical and religious practice can enclose identical experiences. The study examines a range of African American spiritual traditions such as Conjure, Hoodoo, and root working, and contrasts them with the official doctrines of institutionalized religion: Protestant Christianity. African Americans have resignified the supernatural practices as religion, and it can be concluded that African American religion is not always distinct from what others call magic. Instead, these are complementary categories, and they have historically exhibited complementary forms in African American culture.
Thomas F. DeFrantz
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195301717
- eISBN:
- 9780199850648
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301717.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
In the early 1960s, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was a small, multi-racial company of dancers that performed the works of its founding choreographer and other emerging artists. By the late ...
More
In the early 1960s, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was a small, multi-racial company of dancers that performed the works of its founding choreographer and other emerging artists. By the late 1960s, the company had become a well-known African American artistic group closely tied to the civil rights struggle. This book chronicles the troupe's journey from a small modern dance company to one of the premier institutions of African American culture. The book not only charts this rise to national and international renown, but also contextualizes this progress within the civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights struggles of the late 20th century. It examines the most celebrated Ailey dances, drawing on video recordings of Ailey's dances, published interviews, oral histories, and interviews with former Ailey company dancers. The book reveals the relationship between Ailey's works and African American culture as a whole. It illuminates the dual achievement of Ailey as an artist and as an arts activist committed to developing an African American presence in dance. It also addresses concerns about how dance performance is documented, including issues around spectatorship and the display of sexuality, the relationship of Ailey's dances to civil rights activism, and the establishment and maintenance of a successful, large-scale Black Arts institution. Throughout, the book illustrates how Ailey combined elements of African dance with motifs adapted from blues, jazz, and Broadway to choreograph his dances, arguing that Ailey played a significant role in defining the African American cultural canon.Less
In the early 1960s, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was a small, multi-racial company of dancers that performed the works of its founding choreographer and other emerging artists. By the late 1960s, the company had become a well-known African American artistic group closely tied to the civil rights struggle. This book chronicles the troupe's journey from a small modern dance company to one of the premier institutions of African American culture. The book not only charts this rise to national and international renown, but also contextualizes this progress within the civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights struggles of the late 20th century. It examines the most celebrated Ailey dances, drawing on video recordings of Ailey's dances, published interviews, oral histories, and interviews with former Ailey company dancers. The book reveals the relationship between Ailey's works and African American culture as a whole. It illuminates the dual achievement of Ailey as an artist and as an arts activist committed to developing an African American presence in dance. It also addresses concerns about how dance performance is documented, including issues around spectatorship and the display of sexuality, the relationship of Ailey's dances to civil rights activism, and the establishment and maintenance of a successful, large-scale Black Arts institution. Throughout, the book illustrates how Ailey combined elements of African dance with motifs adapted from blues, jazz, and Broadway to choreograph his dances, arguing that Ailey played a significant role in defining the African American cultural canon.
Bill E. Lawson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748646401
- eISBN:
- 9780748684410
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748646401.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The chapters in this work give a vivid presentation of the manner in which members of the black Atlantic artistic community met, and in doing so meshed black art forms emerging from lived experience ...
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The chapters in this work give a vivid presentation of the manner in which members of the black Atlantic artistic community met, and in doing so meshed black art forms emerging from lived experience into the art of Europe and the United States to create new forms while retaining their own distinctive styles. This chapter presents an assessment of the Hollywood film, Stormy Weather (1943) as a supplemental discussion to those emerging from these chapters. It argues that the film unambiguously presents the vitality of the African American cultural experience in a provocative visual narrative that suggests ways of thinking about the role of culture and its relationship to art and politics in the period. It draws attention to certain scenes from the film by way of reflecting on some of the themes explored in the chapter in this volume.Less
The chapters in this work give a vivid presentation of the manner in which members of the black Atlantic artistic community met, and in doing so meshed black art forms emerging from lived experience into the art of Europe and the United States to create new forms while retaining their own distinctive styles. This chapter presents an assessment of the Hollywood film, Stormy Weather (1943) as a supplemental discussion to those emerging from these chapters. It argues that the film unambiguously presents the vitality of the African American cultural experience in a provocative visual narrative that suggests ways of thinking about the role of culture and its relationship to art and politics in the period. It draws attention to certain scenes from the film by way of reflecting on some of the themes explored in the chapter in this volume.
Erica R. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675456
- eISBN:
- 9781452947488
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675456.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
Social and political change is impossible in the absence of gifted male charismatic leadership—this is the fiction that shaped African American culture throughout the twentieth century. If we ...
More
Social and political change is impossible in the absence of gifted male charismatic leadership—this is the fiction that shaped African American culture throughout the twentieth century. If we understand this, this book tells us, we will better appreciate the dramatic variations within both the modern black freedom struggle and the black literary tradition. By considering leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Barack Obama as both historical personages and narrative inventions of contemporary American culture, this book brings to the study of black politics the tools of intertextual narrative analysis as well as deconstruction and close reading. Examining a number of literary restagings of black leadership in African American fiction by W. E. B. Du Bois, George Schuyler, Zora Neale Hurston, William Melvin Kelley, Paul Beatty, and Toni Morrison, the book demonstrates how African American literature has contested charisma as a structuring fiction of modern black politics.Less
Social and political change is impossible in the absence of gifted male charismatic leadership—this is the fiction that shaped African American culture throughout the twentieth century. If we understand this, this book tells us, we will better appreciate the dramatic variations within both the modern black freedom struggle and the black literary tradition. By considering leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Barack Obama as both historical personages and narrative inventions of contemporary American culture, this book brings to the study of black politics the tools of intertextual narrative analysis as well as deconstruction and close reading. Examining a number of literary restagings of black leadership in African American fiction by W. E. B. Du Bois, George Schuyler, Zora Neale Hurston, William Melvin Kelley, Paul Beatty, and Toni Morrison, the book demonstrates how African American literature has contested charisma as a structuring fiction of modern black politics.
Kimberly Chabot Davis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038433
- eISBN:
- 9780252096310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038433.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as ...
More
Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. This book claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years. The book analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, the book focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change. Its study of ethnographic data from book clubs and college classrooms shows how engagement with African American culture and pedagogical support can lead to the kinds of white self-examination that make empathy possible. The result is a book that challenges the trend of focusing on society's failures in achieving cross-racial empathy and instead explores possible avenues for change.Less
Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. This book claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years. The book analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, the book focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change. Its study of ethnographic data from book clubs and college classrooms shows how engagement with African American culture and pedagogical support can lead to the kinds of white self-examination that make empathy possible. The result is a book that challenges the trend of focusing on society's failures in achieving cross-racial empathy and instead explores possible avenues for change.
