Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the ...
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The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the post-reconstruction period, centering African Americans as active participants, rather than merely passive repositories, in the study and representation of black folklore. It proposes a corrective to both the discipline of folklore studies and a new lens through which to read representation of folklore in African American literature. In particular, the introduction shows how developments in folklore studies were inseparable from turn-of-the-century constructions of race.Less
The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the post-reconstruction period, centering African Americans as active participants, rather than merely passive repositories, in the study and representation of black folklore. It proposes a corrective to both the discipline of folklore studies and a new lens through which to read representation of folklore in African American literature. In particular, the introduction shows how developments in folklore studies were inseparable from turn-of-the-century constructions of race.
Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
Chapter three argues that the work of the Hampton Folklore Society must be understood within, but also beyond, the bounds of both the Hampton Institute and the “scientific” frame offered by the ...
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Chapter three argues that the work of the Hampton Folklore Society must be understood within, but also beyond, the bounds of both the Hampton Institute and the “scientific” frame offered by the American Folklore Society. This chapter shows how the folklorists, focusing specifically on folklorists Robert Moton, resisted having their work confined to the ideology of the Hampton Institute, while also questioning the politics of assuming a “scientific,” and often objectifying, approach to the study of their own traditions. Set within the context of the emergence of the “New Negro” ideal, the second half of this chapter examines how the Society became a site of lively dialogue, where members of the larger black intellectual community, particularly Anna Julia Cooper, debated folklore’s role in creating a “new,” distinctly African American literature rooted in a social justice agenda.Less
Chapter three argues that the work of the Hampton Folklore Society must be understood within, but also beyond, the bounds of both the Hampton Institute and the “scientific” frame offered by the American Folklore Society. This chapter shows how the folklorists, focusing specifically on folklorists Robert Moton, resisted having their work confined to the ideology of the Hampton Institute, while also questioning the politics of assuming a “scientific,” and often objectifying, approach to the study of their own traditions. Set within the context of the emergence of the “New Negro” ideal, the second half of this chapter examines how the Society became a site of lively dialogue, where members of the larger black intellectual community, particularly Anna Julia Cooper, debated folklore’s role in creating a “new,” distinctly African American literature rooted in a social justice agenda.
Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
Chapter five details how Charles Chesnutt, in The Conjure Woman (1899), experimented with African American folklore, especially conjure and ritual, as a way to critique the existing epistemological ...
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Chapter five details how Charles Chesnutt, in The Conjure Woman (1899), experimented with African American folklore, especially conjure and ritual, as a way to critique the existing epistemological approaches to understanding black culture and black history, and later, in The Colonel’s Dream (1905) turned his attention to exposing the white-supremacist forms of folklore that worked to reinforce existing structures of race relations. In addition to examining how Chesnutt posited black folklore as an alternative way of constructing, perceiving, and responding to current and historical realities, the chapter also introduces the Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream (1905) as a novel that painstakingly unravels the conflicting fictions of folklore and race by exposing the customary politics of race relations that defined both whiteness, as well as his white characters’ attitudes about race, African Americans, and themselves.Less
Chapter five details how Charles Chesnutt, in The Conjure Woman (1899), experimented with African American folklore, especially conjure and ritual, as a way to critique the existing epistemological approaches to understanding black culture and black history, and later, in The Colonel’s Dream (1905) turned his attention to exposing the white-supremacist forms of folklore that worked to reinforce existing structures of race relations. In addition to examining how Chesnutt posited black folklore as an alternative way of constructing, perceiving, and responding to current and historical realities, the chapter also introduces the Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream (1905) as a novel that painstakingly unravels the conflicting fictions of folklore and race by exposing the customary politics of race relations that defined both whiteness, as well as his white characters’ attitudes about race, African Americans, and themselves.
Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
Before the innovative and groundbreaking work of Zora Neale Hurston, folklorists from the Hampton Institute collected, studied and wrote about African American folklore. Like Hurston, the Hampton ...
More
Before the innovative and groundbreaking work of Zora Neale Hurston, folklorists from the Hampton Institute collected, studied and wrote about African American folklore. Like Hurston, the Hampton folklorists worked within, but also beyond the bounds of white mainstream institutions, often calling into question the meaning of the very folklore projects in which they were engaged. This book brings together these folklorists, along with a disparate group of African American authors and scholars, including Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Anna Julia Cooper, to explore how black authors and folklorists were active participants--rather than passive observers--in conversations about the politics of representing black folklore. Examining literary texts, folklore documents, cultural performances, legal discourse, and political rhetoric, Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation demonstrates how folklore studies became a battle ground across which issues of racial identity and difference were asserted and debated at the turn of the twentieth century. The book is framed by two questions of historical and continuing import, namely, what role have representations of black folklore played in constructing notions of racial identity that remain entrenched up to and through present day, and how have those ideas impacted the way African Americans think about and creatively engage with black cultural traditions. This study offers a new context for re-thinking the relationship between African American Literature, African American folklore, race, and the politics of representation.Less
Before the innovative and groundbreaking work of Zora Neale Hurston, folklorists from the Hampton Institute collected, studied and wrote about African American folklore. Like Hurston, the Hampton folklorists worked within, but also beyond the bounds of white mainstream institutions, often calling into question the meaning of the very folklore projects in which they were engaged. This book brings together these folklorists, along with a disparate group of African American authors and scholars, including Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Anna Julia Cooper, to explore how black authors and folklorists were active participants--rather than passive observers--in conversations about the politics of representing black folklore. Examining literary texts, folklore documents, cultural performances, legal discourse, and political rhetoric, Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation demonstrates how folklore studies became a battle ground across which issues of racial identity and difference were asserted and debated at the turn of the twentieth century. The book is framed by two questions of historical and continuing import, namely, what role have representations of black folklore played in constructing notions of racial identity that remain entrenched up to and through present day, and how have those ideas impacted the way African Americans think about and creatively engage with black cultural traditions. This study offers a new context for re-thinking the relationship between African American Literature, African American folklore, race, and the politics of representation.
Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
Chapter four argues that Paul Laurence Dunbar, like the Hampton folklorists, had to negotiate the politics of being objectified as a representative embodiment of the African American folklore and/or ...
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Chapter four argues that Paul Laurence Dunbar, like the Hampton folklorists, had to negotiate the politics of being objectified as a representative embodiment of the African American folklore and/or folk communities he chose to represent. In his literary works, masking and dissimilation become his vehicles for exposing the many intertwined literary and cultural conventions that determined the range of black racial representation. In his 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods, he critiques the idealized notions of folklore through the text’s depiction of tensions within the Southern folk community. He further challenges the construction of folklore as a Southern, rural phenomenon by introducing a new geographic terrain--the urban North--in which to imagine black folklore, thereby introducing into African American literature alternative geographies for locating African American folklore.Less
Chapter four argues that Paul Laurence Dunbar, like the Hampton folklorists, had to negotiate the politics of being objectified as a representative embodiment of the African American folklore and/or folk communities he chose to represent. In his literary works, masking and dissimilation become his vehicles for exposing the many intertwined literary and cultural conventions that determined the range of black racial representation. In his 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods, he critiques the idealized notions of folklore through the text’s depiction of tensions within the Southern folk community. He further challenges the construction of folklore as a Southern, rural phenomenon by introducing a new geographic terrain--the urban North--in which to imagine black folklore, thereby introducing into African American literature alternative geographies for locating African American folklore.
Jeroen Dewulf
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496808813
- eISBN:
- 9781496808851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496808813.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The second chapter focuses on the way the African-American community celebrated the Pinkster holiday. This chapter, entitled “Celebrating Pinkster as an African-American Tradition,” shows how the ...
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The second chapter focuses on the way the African-American community celebrated the Pinkster holiday. This chapter, entitled “Celebrating Pinkster as an African-American Tradition,” shows how the most spectacular African American Pinkster performances were the king processions in Albany and highlights how different these slave celebrations were from those of the Dutch. It also corrects the assumption that Pinkster was a predominantly rural phenomenon by providing new evidence that the festival was still celebrated by African Americans in the heart of Manhattan in the early nineteenth century.Less
The second chapter focuses on the way the African-American community celebrated the Pinkster holiday. This chapter, entitled “Celebrating Pinkster as an African-American Tradition,” shows how the most spectacular African American Pinkster performances were the king processions in Albany and highlights how different these slave celebrations were from those of the Dutch. It also corrects the assumption that Pinkster was a predominantly rural phenomenon by providing new evidence that the festival was still celebrated by African Americans in the heart of Manhattan in the early nineteenth century.
Jeanne Pitre Soileau
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496810403
- eISBN:
- 9781496810441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496810403.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their ...
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This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their folklore – African American and white children began to communicate on the playground, sharing chants, jokes, jump rope rhymes, taunts, teases, and stories. Through the next forty-four years, schoolchildren of South Louisiana were able to conserve much traditional schoolyard lore while adapting to tremendous social and material changes and incorporating into play elements from media, computers, smartphones, and the Internet. As time passed African American vernacular became trendy among teenage whites. Black popular music became the music of choice for many worldwide. This is a story about how children, African American and “other” have learned to fit play into their rapidly changing society.Less
This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their folklore – African American and white children began to communicate on the playground, sharing chants, jokes, jump rope rhymes, taunts, teases, and stories. Through the next forty-four years, schoolchildren of South Louisiana were able to conserve much traditional schoolyard lore while adapting to tremendous social and material changes and incorporating into play elements from media, computers, smartphones, and the Internet. As time passed African American vernacular became trendy among teenage whites. Black popular music became the music of choice for many worldwide. This is a story about how children, African American and “other” have learned to fit play into their rapidly changing society.
