African-American Studies Research Papers

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After... more

This book presents a provocatively new interpretation of one of New Orleans' most enigmatic traditions, the Mardi Gras Indians. By interpreting the tradition in an Atlantic context, Dewulf traces the " black Indians " back to the ancient... more

The Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture is the first museum to tell the full story of African Americans in Natchez, Miss., a city on the Mississippi River that is located in the southwest part of the state. Since its... more

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- by Roscoe Barnes III and +1
  Bobby Dennis
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- 11
  History of Slavery, American Civil War, African American History, Black History

In two studies, this thesis depicts the relationship between minority group status in the United States, perceived discrimination, and coping with stress. Past literature on coping and its types – problem-focused versus emotion-focused –... more

Frances Joseph-Gaudet (1861-1934) was a transformative African American social activist who remains little-known outside Louisiana. Her autobiography, He Leadeth Me (1911), provides an account of Joseph-Gaudet’s prison reform work and... more

Commentators have suggested that Nella Larsen’s Passing rejects the view that there is some sort of black essence. I want to challenge this reading. Since Irene is the most vocal advocate of an essence in respect to which all blacks are... more

Freely available at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnFreedomsCall "Synthesizing new interviews with previously known but never integrated information on the shared struggles of Jewish and African-American communities, "Stayed on... more

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- by S. D. Antonia Jones
- •
- 9
  Tourism Studies, Jewish Studies, Basic Income, Black History

African Americans, who are descendants of slaves forcibly brought from Africa to America hundreds of years ago, and contemporary voluntary African migrants to the USA do not form a single “black community”. This statement contradicts the... more

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- by Chiara Patrizi
- •
- African-American Studies

Most sociological research on racial discrimination has had an “inter-racial” focus. That is, researchers have been principally concerned with the disparate treatment that people of color receive relative to Whites in different social... more

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- by Ted Thornhill, Ph.D.
- •
- 128
  Business, Management, Discourse Analysis, History

This chapter begins by tracing the desk in my office at California State University back to its production in California’s Prison Industry Authority—a carceral manufacturing system that, at a rate of 30 to 95 cents per hour, employs a... more

America continues its struggle to provide freedom for African Americans and to varying degrees, all Americans. Within this struggle, Critical Race Theory is emerging as an approach with which to expand and strengthen efforts for providing... more

This are page proofs -- with a couple corrections! -- of a piece in the *Comintern Aesthetics* volume edited by Amelia Glaser and Steven Lee. From the essay: "While Langston Hughes did not start writing poems about Lenin until the... more

This are page proofs -- with a couple corrections! -- of a piece in the *Comintern Aesthetics* volume edited by Amelia Glaser and Steven Lee.

From the essay: "While Langston Hughes did not start writing poems about Lenin until the 1930s, he had long been interested in an anti-racist, globally minded socialism. From the very beginning of his career as writer, he was centrally engaged with the political and poetic problem of representing a black collectivity and representing it first of all to itself rather than to a white or “general” public. As he explained in I Wonder as I Wander, “I wrote about Negroes, and primarily for Negroes.” In so doing, Hughes experimented with what poetry is and what it can do, as he searched for genres to represent black people to black people as a group in a way that might create and sustain optimism about fighting white supremacy and the poverty it created. In what Fred Moten might call the ongoing “improvisational discovery” of his black studies Hughes confronted basic questions about the very possibility of poetry and politics, and affirmed the necessity of a political poetry and a poetic politics. Hughes looked for ways to give voice to “whole groups of people’s problems” by making
poetry that defied what people expected of poetry, borrowing from the blues and other “low-down” forms, and then, later, by creating a blues-inflected black communist voice, a Leninist blues. Throughout it all, despite the failures and the mishaps and the relentlessness of the violence and humiliations of a white supremacist capitalism, Hughes never gave up on finding ways to “think about feeling good, to make disparate aspects of feeling good thinkable,” as Michael Snediker puts it. Hughes’s optimism was, in this sense, a queer optimism, one that was not based on a belief in progress or other given normative modes of attachment to the world like the family, but on ways of finding, creating, and valuing moments of group joy in the present, even if it was the modest, ambivalent joy of laughing to keep from crying."

From "30 Americans" to "Angry White Boy," from "Bamboozled" to "The Boondocks," from "Chappelle's Show" to "The Colored Museum," this collection of twenty-one essays takes an interdisciplinary look at the flowering of satire and its... more

From "30 Americans" to "Angry White Boy," from "Bamboozled" to "The Boondocks," from "Chappelle's Show" to "The Colored Museum," this collection of twenty-one essays takes an interdisciplinary look at the flowering of satire and its influence in defining new roles in black identity. As a mode of expression for a generation of writers, comedians, cartoonists, musicians, filmmakers, and visual/conceptual artists, satire enables collective questioning of many of the fundamental presumptions about black identity in the wake of the civil rights movement. Whether taking place in popular and controversial television shows, in a provocative series of short internet films, in prize-winning novels and plays, in comic strips, or in conceptual hip hop albums, this satirical impulse has found a receptive audience both within and outside the black community.

Such works have been variously called "post-black," "post-soul," and examples of a "New Black Aesthetic." Whatever the label, this collection bears witness to a noteworthy shift regarding the ways in which African American satirists feel constrained by conventional obligations when treating issues of racial identity, historical memory, and material representation of blackness.

Among the artists examined in this collection are Paul Beatty, Dave Chappelle, Trey Ellis, Percival Everett, Donald Glover (a.k.a. Childish Gambino), Spike Lee, Aaron McGruder, Lynn Nottage, ZZ Packer, Suzan Lori-Parks, Mickalene Thomas, Toure, Kara Walker, and George C. Wolfe. The essays intentionally seek out interconnections among various forms of artistic expression. Contributors look at the ways in which contemporary African American satire engages in a broad ranging critique that exposes fraudulent, outdated, absurd, or otherwise damaging mindsets and behaviors both within and outside the African American community.

Includes essays by Bertram D. Ashe, Thomas R. Britt, Darryl Dickson-Carr, James J. Donahue, Michael B. Gillespie, Gillian Johns, Luvena Kopp, Jennifer Larson, Cameron Leader-Picone, Brandon Manning, Marvin McAllister, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Keenan Norris, Christian Schmidt, Linda Furgerson Selzer, Terrence T. Tucker, Sam Vásquez, and Aimee Zygmonski; with a critical introduction by Derek C. Maus.

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Reviews:

"The twenty-one essays that follow coeditor Derek C. Maus’s fine introduction to this tome demonstrate that, while post-soul may be a contentious epithet, the book _Post-Soul Satire_ is a scholarly treasure trove for those interested in the outcropping of satirical African American writing, visual art, music, film, and television that appeared in the twenty-five years following the publication of novelist Trey Ellis’s much discussed article “The New Black Aesthetic” in the Winter 1989 issue of _Callaloo_.[...]

_Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights_ maps the courageous (to some), unsettling (to others) trajectory African American print, dramatic, and visual artists have pursued in the recent past. And given the present-day socioeconomic and political circumstances in America and abroad, it seems clear that African American satirists will have no need to dull, much less put away, their barbed weapons any time soon. Though the task is daunting, our satirists, with Juvenalian scorn and Horatian mockery, will continue to expose societal warts and cancers with the goal of ameliorating broken aspects of America’s social contract, and _Post-Soul Satire_ will provide the rest of us with a powerful framework for better understanding the complex challenges these artists do and will face. This is not merely a good book but an important one."

-- Joe Weixlmann, _African American Review_ 48.1-2 (Spring-Summer 2015)

"In this dexterous, cogent collection, Maus and Donahue (both, SUNY Potsdam) gather 21 scholarly essays that examine the use, effectiveness, and embrace of satire within African American art of the last two decades. Taken together, the essays propose that satirical postures in contemporary black art communicate an imperative among a new generation of black artists to broaden and redefine African American identity in the post–civil rights/Obama (read “post-black”) era. Though complex at times, the critical work accomplished here sustains engagement. The contributors exhibit an admirable command of history, theory, lexicon, and cultural aesthetics. Moreover, the depth and range of analyses encourage exploration of the many primary texts examined in these pages. Particular attention is paid to the works of Kara Walker, Percival Everett, Aaron McGruder, and Touré. Though these offerings—replete with challenging academic language and lofty theorizations—do not lend themselves to readers outside the academy, those interested in thoughtful critiques of popular culture, literature, media studies, and African American studies will find abundant rewards here. Summing Up: Highly recommended."

-- Jarret Neal, _Choice_ 52.8 (April 2015)

"While there are a number of books on the concepts of post-soul and post-racial (many referenced in the book’s nineteen essays), this collection could be an excellent place to begin one’s education on the topic, even given the focus on satire. The range of material and depth of investigation into satiric representations of black subjectivity in a variety of media is impressive. In his introduction to the collection, Derek Maus makes a persuasive case for the strength of an African American brand of satire significant for understanding current comic art in the United States."

-- James E. Caron, _Studies in American Humor_ 2.1 (Jan. 2016)

"Ultimately, this text will be useful to anyone who is particularly interested in satire, its inner workings, and its social and political impact. It is also going to be useful to anyone researching Black humor as well as those working with the complex methods by which some Black Americans negotiate complicated positions in contemporary society. Furthermore, given recent discussions in the public sphere regarding what does and does not count as satire and who should or should not be the targets of satire, the text seems especially relevant."

-- Jacinta Yanders, _Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature_ 45.1 (2017)

"Post-Soul Satire is a well-chosen assortment of essays that discusses African American issues in various media within the cultural context of the United States and in terms of the phenomenon of post-soul[...]. It is an important contribution to American humor studies, given its sustained focus on satire, humor, and irony."

-- Debarati Byabartta, _Studies in American Humor_ 3.2 (2017)

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- by Derek C. Maus and +1
  James J . Donahue
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- 106
  American Literature, History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, American Studies

The United States of America has an opportunity to build for its advancement as a nation. A critical consideration for this advancement is the extent to which America both recognizes and finds the capacity to review its history for the... more

Post-Black) Bildungsroman or Novel of (Black Bourgeois) Manners? The Logic of Reproduction in Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor MARLON LIEBER As in all of Colson Whitehead's novels, the use of pop-cultural references in Sag Harbor is telling.... more

Circulation of Ideas between the Americas

The principle of communality is denoted as the ability of the originally and essentially communal worldview, consciousness, behavioral pattern, socio-political norms and relations to spread on all the levels of societal complexity... more

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- by Dmitri Bondarenko
- •
- 75
  History, Cultural History, Sociology of Culture, African Studies

An interview with Donald Harrison, Sr. Big Chief of Guardians of the Flame, on the history and culture of the Mardi Gras Indians. From Mesechabe: The Journal of Surregionalism 8 (Spring 1991).

Richard Wright's The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference has long been a fundamental book in Bandung historiography. As a crucial companion volume to The Color Curtain, Roberts and Foulcher's Indonesian Notebook: A... more

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. Drawing on the work of... more

A simple nail excavated from the Venture Smith homestead site in
the Connecticut River Valley has helped tell the inspiring
story of an African man’s resolve in the racist world of
eighteenth century New England.

African Americans and contemporary African migrants to the USA do not form a single “Black community”. Their relations are characterized by simultaneous mutual attraction and repulsion. Based on field evidence, the article discusses the... more

This project theorizes the Black God trope as a rhetorical strategy used by many African-American rhetors across the history of African-American letters. The Black God trope is a linguistic, imagistic, and embodied rendering of religious... more

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King stood at the podium “gripped by an uncontrollable emotion” and cried aloud, “Lord, I hope that no one will have to die as a result of our struggle for freedom in Montgomery. Certainly, I don’t want to die. But if anyone has to die,... more

King stood at the podium “gripped by an uncontrollable emotion” and cried aloud, “Lord, I hope that no one will have to die as a result of our struggle for freedom in Montgomery. Certainly, I don’t want to die. But if anyone has to die, let it be me!…some members of the audience sobbed and others shouted ‘No, no,’ King gripped the pulpit and remained rooted to the spot, speechless. Fellow ministers went to his aid, but it was several minutes before King sat down.”

Adam Fairclough, author of the biography, Martin Luther King, Jr., says of this moment,

“It would be dangerous to take such public expressions of emotion at face value; a cynic might even regard them as the kind of dramatic ploy beloved by preachers. King himself became a past master at manipulating audiences; although he professed to despise the ranting, or “whooping” of uneducated black clergymen, he knew all the tricks of his trade. And he soon learned that references to his own suffering and affirmations of his willingness to die not only aroused intense emotion but also deflected criticism and reinforced unity. His highly public breakdown might also have been caused, at least in part, by a combination of fatigue and stress.”

Fairclough’s reflection on King’s emotional state argues for a public and political performance theory for the function of death in the language of black leadership. However, within the African American historical experience, the dimensions of death language take not just political, but also cultural and mystical functions. Often the cultural and mystical perceptions of death process through an act of prophetic vision or prophesying. Thus, historians must interpret King’s pulpit moment within the political, cultural, and spiritual totality of the African American experience of death prophecy. In addition, King’s pulpit moment points to a widely shared cultural and spiritual experience that intersects across political paradigms of “integrationist”, “nationalist”, or “revolutionary” as exampled by the death rhetoric of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton. By proposing that the cultural and spiritual aspects of death rhetoric traverses the black political spectrum, this paper encourages historians to be more inclusive of less customary, sometimes uncomfortable, interpretations which defer to the practices and worldview of black people.

African American artist Grafton Brown depicted a young Virginia City (founded in 1859) with a bird's eye view, captured in late 1860 or early 1861. Brown was only twenty years old at the time. The image includes insets around the border,... more

This article argues that Pinkster should be understood as an Atlantic Creole festival in a Dutch-American context, rather than a Dutch-African festival in an American context. It claims that the syncretic character of Pinkster did not... more

Long overdue are scholarly close readings that shed light on the irreverent homage to the Ralph Ellison pervading Percival Everett’s Erasure, a novel less about Everett than about Ellison’s democratic aesthetics. Narrator/protagonist,... more

Building on the suggestion by the editors of the Routledge Companion to World Literature (2011) to re-frame the fi eld of literary studies from a global and transnational perspective, this article suggests a new approach to the concept of... more

FILM GET OUT (2017) TELLS THE story of a black man, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), who goes to spend the weekend with the wealthy, seemingly liberal family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). As the film... more

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- by David Gillota
- •
- 6
  Horror Film, Humor/Satire, Humor Studies, Horror Studies

To discuss the subject of privilege is to acknowledge and be clear about the fact that we all have different worldviews formed by our respective experiences, and those experiences are in part shaped—through no control of our own—by the... more

An analysis of the radically libertarian and communitarian dimensions of the early Black Panther program. Published on the "It Is What It Isn't" Blog, Changing Suns Press, Nov. 25, 2015.

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- by John Clark
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- 151
  History, American History, Sociology, Political Sociology

Call for Papers Globalized Peripheries New Approaches to the Atlantic World 1680–1850 Date: July 5th–7th, 2018 Place: European University Viadrina (Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany) Possible topics include but are not limited to: • The... more

African Americans, descendants of slaves forcidly brought from Africa to America hundreds years ago, and contemporary voluntary African migrants to the USA do not form a single “Black community.” Remarkably, this fact contradicts the... more

African Americans, descendants of slaves forcidly brought from Africa to America hundreds years ago, and contemporary voluntary African migrants to the USA do not form a single “Black community.” Remarkably, this fact contradicts the postulates of many breeds of “Black nationalism” from the mid-19th century onward, which argue that all Black people are “brothers and sisters,” because they share a common spirituality and have a common cause that demands their joint action all over the world. Among the reasons for this, differences in the reflection of the past in their historic memory play an important role. Based on evidence collected in six states in 2013 and 2014, this article discusses reflection in historic memory and place in the mass consciousness of African Americans and contemporary African migrants of the key periods and events in Black American and African history: pre-slave trade and pre-colonial time; transatlantic slave trade, slavery and its abolition in the US; colonialism and anticolonial struggle in Africa; civil rights movement in the USA; and the demise of apartheid in South Africa. It is shown that contemporary African migrants and African Americans see the key events of the past differently. Even more so, each group sees different events as key. Many members of both groups do not feel that they share a common “Black history.” To some extent, visions of the past promote Africans and African Americans’ rapprochement as victims of long-lasting White domination. However, in the final analysis, collective historic memory of both groups works more in the direction of separating them from each other by generating and supporting contradictory or even negative images of mutual perception. In general, the relations between African Americans and recent African migrants are characterised by simultaneous mutual attraction and repulsion of two magnets. They understand that among all ethnoracial communities in the country, they (and also African Caribbeans) are the closest to each other, but myriads of differences cause mutual repulsion. The differences in the historic memory of African Americans and recent African migrants in the USA play a significant role in the fact that the “magnetic poles” of the Black communities both attract and repel them.

In fascinating detail, chronicling the history of the ancient Black races including the Black Hebrews.

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- by Ryan Jordan
- •
- 2
  Religion and Politics, African-American Studies

The Dr. John Banks House, which once served as the headquarters for the Natchez NAACP, will be the first site of a Mississippi Freedom Trail marker in Natchez. Approval of the designation by the Mississippi Humanities Council and Visit... more

"Оттенки черного. Культурно-антропологические аспекты взаимовосприятия и взаимоотношений африкано-американцев и мигрантов из стран субсахарской Африки в США" The book is based on the field evidence collected in 2013–2015 in more than a... more

"Оттенки черного. Культурно-антропологические аспекты взаимовосприятия и взаимоотношений африкано-американцев и мигрантов из стран субсахарской Африки в США"

The book is based on the field evidence collected in 2013–2015 in more than a dozen cities and towns of seven states.

Монография основана на полевых материалах, собранных в 2013–2015 годах. В центре внимания автора – взаимовосприятие и взаимоотношения представителей двух африканских по происхождению групп населения США: существующего уже несколько столетий сообщества африкано-американцев и сложившихся в наше время диаспор выходцев из различных государств субсахарской Африки. В историко-социологическом контексте рассматриваются такие культурно-антропологические аспекты восприятия друг друга черными американцами и африканскими мигрантами, как историческая память и взаимные образы культур. Показывается влияние того, как взаимовосприятие носителей разных культур сказывается на взаимоотношениях между ними. Монография, с одной стороны, лежит в русле общих тенденций в современных антропологии и африканистике, а с другой, вносит вклад в разработку конкретной слабоизученной темы, актуальной не только для этих научных дисциплин, но и для американистики.

Globalization has continued to engender enormous debate, controversy, protest and demonstrations that are sometimes violent. The reactions against globalization and its implication to human development have been pronounced in the... more

Critical Insights: The Color Purple. Ed. Jericho Williams. Ipswich: Salem Press, 2022. 191-206.

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The question of culture and its relation to nation is one that remains relevant and pervasive across the world, particularly in marginalized populations. People of colour often see the most direct results of the oppressive systems of... more

The phenomenon known as the “Africana Studies Effect” is gaining growing attention due to its relationship to student engagement on college campuses. The present study includes an examination of twelve empirical studies on the impact of... more

African-American Studies

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