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.
T. C. McCaskie
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198205654
- eISBN:
- 9780191676734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205654.003.0029
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History, British and Irish Modern History
Encounters between cultures are complex, ambiguous, and unstable transactions, simultaneously events in time and works of the imagination. Irrespective of disparities in power, cultural encounters ...
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Encounters between cultures are complex, ambiguous, and unstable transactions, simultaneously events in time and works of the imagination. Irrespective of disparities in power, cultural encounters between Britain and Africa in the nineteenth century conformed to the model just described. It is important to acknowledge this, for it is all too easy — but profoundly misleading — to equate the achieved territorial substance of the British Empire in Africa with a hegemony in areas other than the geographical. The British encounter with African cultures in the nineteenth century was never a direct, one-way road leading from London. At the start of the nineteenth century, Britain's presence in tropical Africa was narrowly confined to the-mainly West African-coast. The sheer number and diversity of African cultures that encountered the British in the course of the nineteenth century is bewildering. British and other European colonialisms incorporated African peoples into the ideological and materialist worlds of Western modernity. All African cultures are still negotiating dialogue with — and within — the implications of that fact.Less
Encounters between cultures are complex, ambiguous, and unstable transactions, simultaneously events in time and works of the imagination. Irrespective of disparities in power, cultural encounters between Britain and Africa in the nineteenth century conformed to the model just described. It is important to acknowledge this, for it is all too easy — but profoundly misleading — to equate the achieved territorial substance of the British Empire in Africa with a hegemony in areas other than the geographical. The British encounter with African cultures in the nineteenth century was never a direct, one-way road leading from London. At the start of the nineteenth century, Britain's presence in tropical Africa was narrowly confined to the-mainly West African-coast. The sheer number and diversity of African cultures that encountered the British in the course of the nineteenth century is bewildering. British and other European colonialisms incorporated African peoples into the ideological and materialist worlds of Western modernity. All African cultures are still negotiating dialogue with — and within — the implications of that fact.
Matthew Hart
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195390339
- eISBN:
- 9780199776191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390339.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter considers the aesthetic, literary‐historical, and political meanings of the term “Afro‐modernism.” It first introduces Melvin B. Tolson's modernist epic, Harlem Gallery (1965), via the ...
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This chapter considers the aesthetic, literary‐historical, and political meanings of the term “Afro‐modernism.” It first introduces Melvin B. Tolson's modernist epic, Harlem Gallery (1965), via the innovative blues quatrains of Harryette Mullen's Muse & Drudge (1995), explaining how both poems exemplify an embattled “Afro‐modernist” tradition. The chapter then analyzes Tolson's 1953 Libretto for the Republic of Liberia via the documentary evidence of his appointment as Liberian Poet Laureate. As a late modernist epic about an oligarchic state led by freed slaves, Libretto witnesses a crucial overlapping of the narratives of diasporic nationalism and African “local imperialism.” The chapter concludes by explaining how the poetic form of Libretto registers the schism between the modernizing statecraft of the Liberian elite and the transgressive “countermodernity” of Pan‐Africanism.Less
This chapter considers the aesthetic, literary‐historical, and political meanings of the term “Afro‐modernism.” It first introduces Melvin B. Tolson's modernist epic, Harlem Gallery (1965), via the innovative blues quatrains of Harryette Mullen's Muse & Drudge (1995), explaining how both poems exemplify an embattled “Afro‐modernist” tradition. The chapter then analyzes Tolson's 1953 Libretto for the Republic of Liberia via the documentary evidence of his appointment as Liberian Poet Laureate. As a late modernist epic about an oligarchic state led by freed slaves, Libretto witnesses a crucial overlapping of the narratives of diasporic nationalism and African “local imperialism.” The chapter concludes by explaining how the poetic form of Libretto registers the schism between the modernizing statecraft of the Liberian elite and the transgressive “countermodernity” of Pan‐Africanism.
Kwame Gyekye
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112252
- eISBN:
- 9780199853069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112252.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Conceptualization of modernity in Africa is discussed in this section, in disagreement with the notion that “modernization” is similar to Westernization for the reason that contemporary or developed ...
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Conceptualization of modernity in Africa is discussed in this section, in disagreement with the notion that “modernization” is similar to Westernization for the reason that contemporary or developed nonwestern nations may not possess all elements of Western modernity. Hence, one-dimensional understanding of modernity is highly disputed. It is hoped that there will be a realization of modernity suitable to cultural differences. It is therefore recommended that African modernity must be grounded from the complexities of African culture, and not from any foreign orientation. With longitudinal studies and field immersion, this objective will be materialized through the development and improvement of indigenous technologies along with the drastic modifications in some of the old “things.” To come up with an appreciative notion of the “present,” everything must be self-created but in accordance to the African intellect and standards.Less
Conceptualization of modernity in Africa is discussed in this section, in disagreement with the notion that “modernization” is similar to Westernization for the reason that contemporary or developed nonwestern nations may not possess all elements of Western modernity. Hence, one-dimensional understanding of modernity is highly disputed. It is hoped that there will be a realization of modernity suitable to cultural differences. It is therefore recommended that African modernity must be grounded from the complexities of African culture, and not from any foreign orientation. With longitudinal studies and field immersion, this objective will be materialized through the development and improvement of indigenous technologies along with the drastic modifications in some of the old “things.” To come up with an appreciative notion of the “present,” everything must be self-created but in accordance to the African intellect and standards.
T. C. Mccaskie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199290673
- eISBN:
- 9780191700569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290673.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter discusses the cultural encounters between Britain and Africa in the nineteenth century. It shows that early nineteenth-century British sojourners in African cultures were supplicants of ...
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This chapter discusses the cultural encounters between Britain and Africa in the nineteenth century. It shows that early nineteenth-century British sojourners in African cultures were supplicants of one kind or another. They asked for audience, consideration, protection, information, trade, diplomatic relations, converts, and the rest. By corollary, African cultures maintained the capacity not only to accede to or deny such requests but also to control or expel British visitors. A vital element in the same configuration was that African cultures had considerable powers of arbitration in rejecting or accepting British ideas and artefacts. The record overall shows African cultures to have been aware of the notion of caveat emptor. These conditions shifted after mid-century, and from the 1870s on African cultures found themselves increasingly unable to resist British penetration.Less
This chapter discusses the cultural encounters between Britain and Africa in the nineteenth century. It shows that early nineteenth-century British sojourners in African cultures were supplicants of one kind or another. They asked for audience, consideration, protection, information, trade, diplomatic relations, converts, and the rest. By corollary, African cultures maintained the capacity not only to accede to or deny such requests but also to control or expel British visitors. A vital element in the same configuration was that African cultures had considerable powers of arbitration in rejecting or accepting British ideas and artefacts. The record overall shows African cultures to have been aware of the notion of caveat emptor. These conditions shifted after mid-century, and from the 1870s on African cultures found themselves increasingly unable to resist British penetration.
Lawrence W. Levine
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195082975
- eISBN:
- 9780199854035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195082975.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The chapter shows the role that African culture played in the development of thought and society in the United States. A number of assumptions were made such as political and economic subordination ...
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The chapter shows the role that African culture played in the development of thought and society in the United States. A number of assumptions were made such as political and economic subordination leads inevitably to cultural emasculation. There were also a number of factors that affected the cultural continuity among Africans and their descendents: economic, environmental, and attitudinal forces, and the perpetuation of oral culture in slavery. If one is to understand the distinctiveness of slave religion, one has to understand the intimate relationship between the world of sound and the world of sacred time and space in which there were no clear lines between the past and the present, between the sacred and the secular. There is still a need for many studies in certain areas such as: language, material culture, and ethical values.Less
The chapter shows the role that African culture played in the development of thought and society in the United States. A number of assumptions were made such as political and economic subordination leads inevitably to cultural emasculation. There were also a number of factors that affected the cultural continuity among Africans and their descendents: economic, environmental, and attitudinal forces, and the perpetuation of oral culture in slavery. If one is to understand the distinctiveness of slave religion, one has to understand the intimate relationship between the world of sound and the world of sacred time and space in which there were no clear lines between the past and the present, between the sacred and the secular. There is still a need for many studies in certain areas such as: language, material culture, and ethical values.
Adrian Hastings
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198263999
- eISBN:
- 9780191600623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198263996.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
Aims to focus attention instead on African Africa, the great sweep of the continent still dominated until the 1880s by the internal norms of its tradition—diverse, conflictual, and black. These were, ...
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Aims to focus attention instead on African Africa, the great sweep of the continent still dominated until the 1880s by the internal norms of its tradition—diverse, conflictual, and black. These were, moreover, norms which, while politically undermined almost everywhere by the turn of the century, continued to control the cultural and social core of the real world of the vast majority of Africans through the greater part of the twentieth century. The chapter addresses the question of how far these cultural structures were inimical to the spread of Christianity, or favoured it, or were, at least, capable of serving it. It points out that the history of the Christianization of Africa has usually been written within a context of the diffusion of European culture, and that while this is not a false context, it is, nevertheless, for most Africans, a subsidiary one, since their own principal context was their traditional, but not unchanging, thought world. The fate of Christianity depended upon its ability to be reread in terms and with implications, for the most part, unimagined by its propagators.Less
Aims to focus attention instead on African Africa, the great sweep of the continent still dominated until the 1880s by the internal norms of its tradition—diverse, conflictual, and black. These were, moreover, norms which, while politically undermined almost everywhere by the turn of the century, continued to control the cultural and social core of the real world of the vast majority of Africans through the greater part of the twentieth century. The chapter addresses the question of how far these cultural structures were inimical to the spread of Christianity, or favoured it, or were, at least, capable of serving it. It points out that the history of the Christianization of Africa has usually been written within a context of the diffusion of European culture, and that while this is not a false context, it is, nevertheless, for most Africans, a subsidiary one, since their own principal context was their traditional, but not unchanging, thought world. The fate of Christianity depended upon its ability to be reread in terms and with implications, for the most part, unimagined by its propagators.
Lawrence W. Levine
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195082975
- eISBN:
- 9780199854035
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195082975.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
In this book, fourteen chapters, written over two decades, cover American history, historiography, aspects of black culture, and American popular culture (during the Great Depression). Some deal with ...
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In this book, fourteen chapters, written over two decades, cover American history, historiography, aspects of black culture, and American popular culture (during the Great Depression). Some deal with such related topics as the transfer of African culture to America, Marcus Garvey as a black leader, the development of black culture in the 1920s, and the role of jazz in American culture. Several chapters involve recent concern with American popular culture during the Great Depression of the 1930s, including such areas as film, radio, and photography. These chapters offer fresh insights into the black experience and culture in general in America.Less
In this book, fourteen chapters, written over two decades, cover American history, historiography, aspects of black culture, and American popular culture (during the Great Depression). Some deal with such related topics as the transfer of African culture to America, Marcus Garvey as a black leader, the development of black culture in the 1920s, and the role of jazz in American culture. Several chapters involve recent concern with American popular culture during the Great Depression of the 1930s, including such areas as film, radio, and photography. These chapters offer fresh insights into the black experience and culture in general in America.
Frederick Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161310
- eISBN:
- 9781400850280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161310.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African History
This introductory chapter provides an overview of citizenship. Citizenship, in most contemporary formulations, is a relationship between a state and individuals. Two of its features make it a ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of citizenship. Citizenship, in most contemporary formulations, is a relationship between a state and individuals. Two of its features make it a particularly volatile framework. First, it defines inclusion—in a formal sense of membership in a polity and a more subjective sense of belonging—and therefore it also defines exclusion. Second, citizenship melds a person's rights and his or her obligations to a state, so that a state that wishes to enforce obligations faces the fact that the same set of expectations and rhetorics on which its power is based also underscore the claims of individuals to certain rights. One of the great debates of the postwar years among politicians and intellectuals in European and African France was how to reconcile a universalistic, egalitarian conception of citizenship with the particularity of African culture or cultures.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of citizenship. Citizenship, in most contemporary formulations, is a relationship between a state and individuals. Two of its features make it a particularly volatile framework. First, it defines inclusion—in a formal sense of membership in a polity and a more subjective sense of belonging—and therefore it also defines exclusion. Second, citizenship melds a person's rights and his or her obligations to a state, so that a state that wishes to enforce obligations faces the fact that the same set of expectations and rhetorics on which its power is based also underscore the claims of individuals to certain rights. One of the great debates of the postwar years among politicians and intellectuals in European and African France was how to reconcile a universalistic, egalitarian conception of citizenship with the particularity of African culture or cultures.
Lee M. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195114409
- eISBN:
- 9780199785827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019511440X.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This essay discusses how ontological commitments within modern Western culture are no less problematic than those within traditional African cultures. Each posits unobservable entities to explain the ...
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This essay discusses how ontological commitments within modern Western culture are no less problematic than those within traditional African cultures. Each posits unobservable entities to explain the experiential world, and neither has ready access to those posits held as grounding or as otherwise determining what is experienced. It looks at the conceptions of persons in Western and African traditions and suggests that each tradition can learn from the other.Less
This essay discusses how ontological commitments within modern Western culture are no less problematic than those within traditional African cultures. Each posits unobservable entities to explain the experiential world, and neither has ready access to those posits held as grounding or as otherwise determining what is experienced. It looks at the conceptions of persons in Western and African traditions and suggests that each tradition can learn from the other.
Daniel Hack
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691196930
- eISBN:
- 9781400883745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691196930.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This introductory chapter demonstrates how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American literature and print culture used Victorian literature to conduct acts of “African ...
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This introductory chapter demonstrates how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American literature and print culture used Victorian literature to conduct acts of “African Americanization.” Here, close engagement with Victorian literature represented no mere capitulation to existing constraints, but instead constituted a deliberate political strategy and means of artistic expression. The chapter shows that this practice did not impede or undercut the development of a distinctive African American literary culture and tradition, but on the contrary contributed directly to its development. It did so through the very repetition of African Americanizing engagements, repetition that grew increasingly self-conscious and self-referential, as writers and editors built on, responded to, and positioned themselves in relation to prior instances. Victorian literature's role as an important archive for the production of African American literature and print culture, the chapter also argues, makes African American literature and print culture an important archive for the study of Victorian literature.Less
This introductory chapter demonstrates how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American literature and print culture used Victorian literature to conduct acts of “African Americanization.” Here, close engagement with Victorian literature represented no mere capitulation to existing constraints, but instead constituted a deliberate political strategy and means of artistic expression. The chapter shows that this practice did not impede or undercut the development of a distinctive African American literary culture and tradition, but on the contrary contributed directly to its development. It did so through the very repetition of African Americanizing engagements, repetition that grew increasingly self-conscious and self-referential, as writers and editors built on, responded to, and positioned themselves in relation to prior instances. Victorian literature's role as an important archive for the production of African American literature and print culture, the chapter also argues, makes African American literature and print culture an important archive for the study of Victorian literature.
Dell Upton
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300211757
- eISBN:
- 9780300216615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300211757.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter describes the African American History Monument in South Carolina as an epitome of the parameters of what can and cannot be said. It begins with an overview of monuments in the South ...
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This chapter describes the African American History Monument in South Carolina as an epitome of the parameters of what can and cannot be said. It begins with an overview of monuments in the South Carolina State House Grounds, most of which celebrate the period between Secession and World War II that witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy. It then considers the planning stages for the African American History Monument, which was designed by Ed Dwight and the historical narrative of which is overlaid with elements of romantic cultural essentialism expressed as an idealized and unitary conception of Africans and African Americans. It also examines two different strategies used to achieve the monument's purpose: one is a historical narrative rooted in the specifics of the black experience in South Carolina; the other is the romanticized pan-Africanism that creates a type of separation, one that locates all that is fundamental to the African American experience in preslavery Africa and in those aspects of African culture that survived in South Carolina.Less
This chapter describes the African American History Monument in South Carolina as an epitome of the parameters of what can and cannot be said. It begins with an overview of monuments in the South Carolina State House Grounds, most of which celebrate the period between Secession and World War II that witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy. It then considers the planning stages for the African American History Monument, which was designed by Ed Dwight and the historical narrative of which is overlaid with elements of romantic cultural essentialism expressed as an idealized and unitary conception of Africans and African Americans. It also examines two different strategies used to achieve the monument's purpose: one is a historical narrative rooted in the specifics of the black experience in South Carolina; the other is the romanticized pan-Africanism that creates a type of separation, one that locates all that is fundamental to the African American experience in preslavery Africa and in those aspects of African culture that survived in South Carolina.
Lee M. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195114409
- eISBN:
- 9780199785827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019511440X.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the goals of this collection of essays, which include the characterization of the epistemological and metaphysical concerns that shaped ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the goals of this collection of essays, which include the characterization of the epistemological and metaphysical concerns that shaped the conceptual languages and philosophical thought of sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses Eurocentric characterizations of African cultures, institutionalization of racialism in the West, and the concepts of philosophy and conceptual language. It then presents an overview of the essays included in this volume.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the goals of this collection of essays, which include the characterization of the epistemological and metaphysical concerns that shaped the conceptual languages and philosophical thought of sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses Eurocentric characterizations of African cultures, institutionalization of racialism in the West, and the concepts of philosophy and conceptual language. It then presents an overview of the essays included in this volume.
Jay Riley Case
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199772322
- eISBN:
- 9780199932528
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199772322.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
In the decades after the Civil War, African-American evangelicalism grew dramatically in a movement that can be called the African-American Great Awakening. More than just church switching from white ...
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In the decades after the Civil War, African-American evangelicalism grew dramatically in a movement that can be called the African-American Great Awakening. More than just church switching from white to black denominations, this movement also included large numbers of blacks who converted to Christianity for the first time. The overwhelming number of black conversions grew from the efforts of African-American evangelists, not from the hands of white missionaries. This chapter analyzes Henry McNeal Turner's debates with Daniel Alexander Payne in the AME church to show how black evangelicalism used components of American culture, such as democratization and religious freedom, to preserve elements of traditional African culture in their Christian practices. Furthermore, African-American Christianity implicitly challenged white Christianity to consider ways in which it had formed unholy alliances with racist dimensions of Western culture.Less
In the decades after the Civil War, African-American evangelicalism grew dramatically in a movement that can be called the African-American Great Awakening. More than just church switching from white to black denominations, this movement also included large numbers of blacks who converted to Christianity for the first time. The overwhelming number of black conversions grew from the efforts of African-American evangelists, not from the hands of white missionaries. This chapter analyzes Henry McNeal Turner's debates with Daniel Alexander Payne in the AME church to show how black evangelicalism used components of American culture, such as democratization and religious freedom, to preserve elements of traditional African culture in their Christian practices. Furthermore, African-American Christianity implicitly challenged white Christianity to consider ways in which it had formed unholy alliances with racist dimensions of Western culture.
Carol Magee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031526
- eISBN:
- 9781617031533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031526.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter introduces the intrinsic purpose and aim of the book: the imagining of Africa through popular culture. The book focuses on three case studies, each of which has repackaged African visual ...
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This chapter introduces the intrinsic purpose and aim of the book: the imagining of Africa through popular culture. The book focuses on three case studies, each of which has repackaged African visual culture for the American consumer. These cases involve Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and the Walt Disney World Resort. The study focuses primarily on the way in which visual culture reinforces, challenges, and represents social relations, especially as they have been articulated around racialized identities in the past twenty years. The first task in this study, then, is the analysis of how three companies used African visual culture, and how they have generated ideological understandings of Africa for an American public. The second task involves the investigation of the way that African visual culture focuses Americans’ understanding of themselves, particularly around black and white racialized identities.Less
This chapter introduces the intrinsic purpose and aim of the book: the imagining of Africa through popular culture. The book focuses on three case studies, each of which has repackaged African visual culture for the American consumer. These cases involve Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and the Walt Disney World Resort. The study focuses primarily on the way in which visual culture reinforces, challenges, and represents social relations, especially as they have been articulated around racialized identities in the past twenty years. The first task in this study, then, is the analysis of how three companies used African visual culture, and how they have generated ideological understandings of Africa for an American public. The second task involves the investigation of the way that African visual culture focuses Americans’ understanding of themselves, particularly around black and white racialized identities.
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/9780520244504.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter considers the question of what happens to the members of oppressed cultures—or lifeworlds—within capitalism. It focuses on the African American culture, attempting to show how the ...
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This chapter considers the question of what happens to the members of oppressed cultures—or lifeworlds—within capitalism. It focuses on the African American culture, attempting to show how the African Americans in Annapolis made many lives for themselves, and examines the number of excavations that were done in Annapolis in order to literally unearth more information about this culture. The chapter also considers the independence of the blacks and the features of African culture that survive in Annapolis today.Less
This chapter considers the question of what happens to the members of oppressed cultures—or lifeworlds—within capitalism. It focuses on the African American culture, attempting to show how the African Americans in Annapolis made many lives for themselves, and examines the number of excavations that were done in Annapolis in order to literally unearth more information about this culture. The chapter also considers the independence of the blacks and the features of African culture that survive in Annapolis today.
Nadia Nurhussein
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691190969
- eISBN:
- 9780691194134
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691190969.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This is the first book to explore how African American writing and art engaged with visions of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the only African nation, with the ...
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This is the first book to explore how African American writing and art engaged with visions of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the only African nation, with the exception of Liberia, to remain independent during the colonization of the continent, Ethiopia has long held significance for and captivated the imaginations of African Americans. The book delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American artistic and journalistic depictions of Ethiopia, illuminating the increasing tensions and ironies behind cultural celebrations of an African country asserting itself as an imperial power. It navigates texts by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Harry Dean, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, George Schuyler, and others, alongside images and performances that show the intersection of African America with Ethiopia during historic political shifts. From a description of a notorious 1920 Star Order of Ethiopia flag-burning demonstration in Chicago to a discussion of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1935, the book illuminates the growing complications that modern Ethiopia posed for American writers and activists. American media coverage of the African nation exposed a clear contrast between the Pan-African ideal and the modern reality of Ethiopia as an antidemocratic imperialist state: Did Ethiopia represent the black nation of the future, or one of an inert and static past? Revising current understandings of black transnationalism, the book presents a well-rounded exploration of an era when Ethiopia's presence in African American culture was at its height.Less
This is the first book to explore how African American writing and art engaged with visions of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the only African nation, with the exception of Liberia, to remain independent during the colonization of the continent, Ethiopia has long held significance for and captivated the imaginations of African Americans. The book delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American artistic and journalistic depictions of Ethiopia, illuminating the increasing tensions and ironies behind cultural celebrations of an African country asserting itself as an imperial power. It navigates texts by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Harry Dean, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, George Schuyler, and others, alongside images and performances that show the intersection of African America with Ethiopia during historic political shifts. From a description of a notorious 1920 Star Order of Ethiopia flag-burning demonstration in Chicago to a discussion of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1935, the book illuminates the growing complications that modern Ethiopia posed for American writers and activists. American media coverage of the African nation exposed a clear contrast between the Pan-African ideal and the modern reality of Ethiopia as an antidemocratic imperialist state: Did Ethiopia represent the black nation of the future, or one of an inert and static past? Revising current understandings of black transnationalism, the book presents a well-rounded exploration of an era when Ethiopia's presence in African American culture was at its height.
Carol Magee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031526
- eISBN:
- 9781617031533
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031526.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. This book explores this presence, examining Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 ...
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In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. This book explores this presence, examining Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America’s own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, the book argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, Civil Rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and post apartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.Less
In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. This book explores this presence, examining Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America’s own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, the book argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, Civil Rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and post apartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.
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.
I. A. Menkiti
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195114409
- eISBN:
- 9780199785827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019511440X.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This essay contends that traditional African culture is largely misunderstood. It is not rooted in supernaturalism and its metaphysics are empirically grounded. Westerners should acquire a more ...
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This essay contends that traditional African culture is largely misunderstood. It is not rooted in supernaturalism and its metaphysics are empirically grounded. Westerners should acquire a more informed perspective on traditional African thought and have much to learn from traditional African thought that will help them solve salient philosophical concerns within Western philosophy.Less
This essay contends that traditional African culture is largely misunderstood. It is not rooted in supernaturalism and its metaphysics are empirically grounded. Westerners should acquire a more informed perspective on traditional African thought and have much to learn from traditional African thought that will help them solve salient philosophical concerns within Western philosophy.
