African American Arts
344 pages, 7 x 10
15 color images, 1 b-w total
Hardcover
Release Date:06 Dec 2019
ISBN:9781684481538
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African American Arts

Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity

Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett; Foreword by Carrie Mae Weems
Bucknell University Press
Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S. The essays in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity engage readers in critical conversations by activists, scholars, and artists reflecting on national and transnational legacies of African American activism as an element of artistic practice, particularly as they concern artistic expression and race relations, and the intersections of creative processes with economic, sociological, and psychological inequalities. Scholars from the fields of communication, theater, queer studies, media studies, performance studies, dance, visual arts, and fashion design, to name a few, collectively ask: What are the connections between African American arts, the work of social justice, and creative processes? If we conceive the arts as critical to the legacy of Black activism in the United States, how can we use that construct to inform our understanding of the complicated intersections of African American activism and aesthetics? How might we as scholars and creative thinkers further employ the arts to envision and shape a verdant society?

Contributors: Carrie Mae Weems, Carmen Gillespie, Rikki Byrd, Amber Lauren Johnson, Doria E. Charlson, Florencia V. Cornet, Daniel McNeil, Lucy Caplan, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Sammantha McCalla, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Abby Dobson, J. Michael Kinsey, Shondrika Moss-Bouldin, Julie B. Johnson, Sharrell D. Luckett, Jasmine Eileen Coles, Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Rickerby Hinds.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. 
In African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity, Sharrell D. Luckett brings together a treasure trove of essays that contribute greatly to the extant literature on black art and the political economic conditions through which they emerge. With the same care to aesthetics as the artists they analyze, each of the authors in the volume demonstrates that race, artistry, and activism are intimately imbricated—and must be if there is to be a black future. E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and Politics of Authenticity
Three essays will be especially noteworthy for readers new to this topic: Abby Dobson's ‘From Baldwin to Beyoncé,’ Lucy Caplan's 'Race and History on the Operatic Stage,' and Jasmine Coles and Tawnya Pettiford-Wates's 'The Conciliation Project as a Social Experiment.' The last of these explores 'Uncle Tom-ism' as portrayed in minstrel shows and deconstructs the bipolar extremes of the good versus bad slave. Recommended.'  Choice
A compendium of provocative, smart contemporary thought on the politics of culture and possibilities for progressive interventions; and it surveys various fields, identifying figures and projects of worth. Offscreen
In African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity, Sharrell D. Luckett brings together a treasure trove of essays that contribute greatly to the extant literature on black art and the political economic conditions through which they emerge. With the same care to aesthetics as the artists they analyze, each of the authors in the volume demonstrates that race, artistry, and activism are intimately imbricated—and must be if there is to be a black future. E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and Politics of Authenticity
Three essays will be especially noteworthy for readers new to this topic: Abby Dobson's ‘From Baldwin to Beyoncé,’ Lucy Caplan's 'Race and History on the Operatic Stage,' and Jasmine Coles and Tawnya Pettiford-Wates's 'The Conciliation Project as a Social Experiment.' The last of these explores 'Uncle Tom-ism' as portrayed in minstrel shows and deconstructs the bipolar extremes of the good versus bad slave. Recommended.'  Choice
A compendium of provocative, smart contemporary thought on the politics of culture and possibilities for progressive interventions; and it surveys various fields, identifying figures and projects of worth. Offscreen
SHARRELL D. LUCKETT is director of the Helen Weinberger Center for Drama and Playwriting and an assistant professor of drama and performance studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the founding director of the Black Acting Methods Studio, a training program in performance theory and practice.

List of Illustrations                 
 
Visual Foreword: Carrie Mae Weems
 
Series Editor Foreword: Carmen Gillespie
 
Introduction: African American Arts in Action
Sharrell D. Luckett
 
Bodies of Activism
Chapter 1: Trans Identity as Embodied Afrofuturism 
Amber Johnson 
                       
Chapter 2: Designing Our Freedom: Toward a New Discourse of Fashion as a Strategy for Self
Liberation  
Rikki Byrd
 
Chapter 3: Pearl Primus' Choreo-Activism: 1943-1949  
Doria E. Charlson  
 
Chapter 4: Performing New Nationalism/Performing a Living Culture: Josefina Báez’s
"Dominicanish"  
Florencia V. Cornet  
 
Chapter 5: Ethnicity, Ethicalness, Excellence: Armond White’s All-American Humanism
Daniel McNeil
 
Chapter 6: Race and History on the Operatic Stage: Caterina Jarboro Sings Aida 
Lucy Caplan
 
Music & Visual Art as Activism
Chapter  7: “I Am Basquiat”: Tracing Jean-Michel Basquiat's Alterity and Activism in
Paint and Performance 
Genevieve Hyacinthe
           
Chapter 8: “I Luh God”: Erica Campbell, Trap Gospel and the Moral Mask of Language
Discrimination 
Sammantha McCalla
 
Chapter 9: The Hidden Code of the Kongo Cosmogram in African American Art and Culture
Nettrice R. Gaskins 
 
Chapter 10: From Baldwin to Beyoncé: Exploring the Responsibility of the Artist in Society--- Re-envisioning the Black Female Sonic Artist as Citizen  
Abby Dobson
 
Chapter 11: Slaying “Formation”: A Queering of Black Radical Tradition
J. Michael Kinsey 
 
Institutions of Activism
Chapter 12: Centering Blackness Through Performance in Every 28 Hours
Shondrika Moss-Bouldin
 
Chapter 13: Dancing for Justice Philadelphia: Embodiment, Dance, and Social Change 
Julie B. Johnson
 
Chapter 14: A Conversation with Freddie Hendricks of the Freddie Hendricks Youth Ensemble
of Atlanta
Sharrell D. Luckett
 
Chapter 15: The Conciliation Project as a Social Experiment: Behind the Mask of Uncle Tomism
and the Performance of Blackness
Jasmine Coles & Tawnya Pettiford-Wates 
 
Afterword: Blackballin'  
A play by Rickerby Hinds
 
Acknowledgments

Index

About the Contributors
 
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