Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books
Duke University Press Racial Melancholia Racial Dissociation
Book SynopsisIn Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study Trade Review"Intentionally answering the call for interdisciplinary scholarship, this innovative work will be valuable for clinicians as well as scholars of race. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- J. deGuzman * Choice *"One of the most striking aspects of Eng and Han’s book is the relative ease with which it toggles back and forth between psychoanalytic case studies of people in various stages of suffering and characters in novels who were created to embody themes of beauty and triumph, suffering and fracture. . . . There’s a power in being able to recognize our struggles as the result of paradoxes we live within rather than seeing them as purely private failings. It’s a step toward imagining lives that we might be the authors of, with endings that we write ourselves." -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker *"Accessibly written and powerfully argued, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation is an excellent resource for any scholar thinking about race and psychoanalysis and, specifically, who are thinking critically about the use of psychoanalytic paradigms like mourning, loss, melancholia, infantile development, reparation, or transitional objects in relation to questions of the lived experiences of racial oppression." -- Christopher Bennett * Journal of Critical Race Inquiry *"Eng and Han—a literature professor and a psychotherapist, respectively—demonstrate how to understand the entanglements of history, culture, and psychoanalysis for Asian Americans. . . . This is an unusual social justice project, for it imagines a collective politics that is grounded in the intimate—and highly individualized—work of therapeutic repair." -- Amy R. Wong * Public Books *“Eng and Han’s work provides a critical vocabulary for articulating the slippery and insidious ways multicultural violence operates in the contemporary era.... Eng and Han contribute an invaluable perspective on Asian Americans’ racial and psychic processes that will be of interest to scholars across disciplines....” -- Corinne Mitsuye Sugino * Journal of Asian American Studies *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction: The History of the (Racial) Subject and the Subject of (Racial) History 1 Part I: Racial Melancholia 1. Racial Melancholia: Model Minorities, Depression, and Suicide 33 2. Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption, Racial Reparation, and Racial Transnational Objects 66 Part II. Racial Dissociation 3. Racial Dissociation: Parachute Children and Psychic Nowhere 101 4. (Gay) Panic Attack: Coming Out in a Colorblind Age 141 Epilogue 174 Notes 181 Bibliography 203 Index 213
£72.25
Duke University Press Art for Peoples Sake
Book SynopsisRebecca Zorach traces the little-told story of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, showing how its artistic innovations, institution building, and community engagement helped the residents of Chicago's South and West Sides respond to social, political, and economic marginalization.Trade Review"Both fresh and refreshing, Zorach's book on the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in Chicago engages from the very first paragraph and fires on all cylinders—looking at the subject not only from inside the BAM but also in terms of how it challenged traditional art history. . . . Highly recommended. All readers." -- K. P. Buick * Choice *"Using interviews, archival collections, poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, historic census data, and other documentation, Zorach provides a detailed story of the artists, residents, and educators who worked together to transform Chicago communities struggling with the spatial constraints of systematic racism. . . . This would serve well as a resource on the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, community mural history, and African American art history. It is highly recommended for all libraries." -- Stacy R. Williams * ARLIS/NA Reviews *"Zorach makes a rich contribution to the field of art history that has largely ignored the Black Arts Movement. . . . rt for People’s Sake should be required reading for artists, non-profit organizations, community organizers, and scholars interested in social movements, education, and art history." -- Tracey Johnson * Black Perspectives *"[A] clearly written, engaging study." -- Miguel de Baca * Art History *"With Art for People’s Sake, Rebecca Zorach makes a valuable intervention in art historical discourse. Zorach emphasizes the importance of the Black Arts Movement for better understanding artistic engagement with site-specificity, social practice, and performance art." -- Benjamin Jones * CAA Reviews *"Thoughtfully argued and beautifully written and illustrated, this book will be a vital resource for scholars and students of visual culture, art history, urban history, and communication studies interested in the dynamics of race, collaboration, imagination, and politics. Many of its images (of which there are an astonishing number) are vital to understanding Chicago, the Black Arts Movement, and their dynamic relationship to place, politics, and culture." -- Caitlin Frances Bruce * Winterthur Portfolio *“In this superb addition to scholarship on the Black Arts Movement, Rebecca Zorach captures luminously how black visual artists of the late 1960s and early 1970s strove to situate themselves and their artworks.” -- Daniel Matlin * Journal of American Studies *"Art for People's Sake is an important addition to the new scholarship on radical Black Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. . . . One gets a vital portrait of Black Arts in arguably the most enduring and influential center of the movement." -- James Smethurst * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsIllustrations vii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Black Arts Movement in Chicago 1 1. Claiming Space, Being in Public 30 2. Cultural Nationalism and Community Culture 85 3. An Experimental Friendship 124 4. The Black Family 179 5. Until the Walls Come Down 215 6. Starring the Black Community 257 Notes 299 Bibliography 349 Index 375
£22.79
Duke University Press Captivating Technology
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Captivating Technology examine how carceral technologies such as electronic ankle monitors and predictive-policing algorithms are being deployed to classify and coerce specific populations and whether these innovations can be appropriated and reimagined for more liberatory ends.Trade Review"The book comes at a timely moment, contributing to pressing contemporary conversations about predictive algorithms, bias in AI, new modes of surveillance, and the myriad ways our increasingly technologically mediated lives are experienced unequally along lines of race, class, and gender. . . . Captivating Technology offers a meaningful contribution to public and scholarly discussions of technological (in)justice." -- Naomi Zucker * Somatosphere *"Benjamin presents a rich and original contribution to critical studies of race and technoscience." -- Clara Hick * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“Captivating Technology is a powerful and deeply creative text that excavates suppressed histories just as much as it works towards building new futures.” -- Susila Gurusami * Surveillance & Society *“Captivating Technology...is an excellent collection that is compelling both in rich individual chapters and in the synthetic whole.... One of the strengths of this collective volume is its deliberate use of literary technologies.” -- Vivette García-Deister and Anne Pollock * BioSocieties *“[Captivating Technology] is an ideal in action; unfettered by carceral imaginations, scholars can invent different worlds that replace—and not merely, through reform, extend—the discriminatory societies we have made together.” -- David Theodore * Technology and Culture *Table of ContentsForeword / Troy Duster xi Acknowledgments / Ruha Benjamin xv Part I. Carceral Techniques from Plantation to Prison 1. Naturalizing Coercion: The Tuskegee Experiments and the Laboratory Life of the Plantation / Britt Rusert 25 2. Consumed by Disease: Medical Archives, Latino Fictions, and Carceral Health Imaginaries / Christopher Perreira 50 3. Billions Served: Prison Food Regimes, Nutritional Punishment, and Gastronomical Resistance / Anthony Ryan Hatch 67 4. Shadows of War, Traces of Policing: The Weaponization of Space and the Sensible Preemption / Andrea Miller 85 5. This Is Not Minority Report: Predictive Policing and Population Racism / R. Joshua Scannell 107 Part II. Surveillance Systems from Facebook to Fast Fashion 6. Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy / Winifred Poster 133 7. Digital Character in "The Scored Society": FICO, Social Networks, and the Competing Measurements of Creditworthimess / Tamara K. Nopper 170 8. Deception by Design: Digital Skin, Racial Matter, and the New Policing of Child Sexual Exploitation / Mitali Thakor 188 9. Employing the Carceral Imaginary: An Ethnography of Worker Surveillance in the Retail Industry / Madison Van Oort 209 Part III. Retooling Liberation from Abolitionists to Afrofuturists 10. Anti-Racist Technoscience: A Generative Tradition / Ron Eglash 227 11. Techo-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation across the African Diaspora and Global South / Nettrice R. Gaskins 252 12. Making Skin Visible through Liberatory Design / Lorna Roth 275 13. Scratch a Theory, You Find a Biography: A Conversation with Troy Duster 308 14. Reimagining Race, Resistance, and Technoscience: A Conversation with Dorothy Roberts 328 Bibliography 349 Contributors 389 Index 393
£80.75
Duke University Press Latinx Lives in Hemsipheric Context
Book SynopsisThis special issue investigates the intersections among Latinx, Chicanx, ethnic, and hemispheric American Studies, mapping the history of Latinx and Latin American literary and cultural production as it has circulated through the United States and the Americas. The issue comprisesoriginal archival research on Latinx print culture, modernismo, and land grabs, as well as short position pieces on the relevance of Latinx both asa term and as a field category for historical scholarship, representational politics, and critical intervention. Taken as a whole, the issue interrogates how Latinx literary, cultural, and scholarly productions circulate across the Americas in the same ways as the lives and bodies of Latinx peoples have moved, migrated, or mobilized throughout history. Contributors: Elise Bartosik-Vélez, Ralph Bauer, Rachel Conrad Bracken, Anna Brickhouse, John Alba Cutler, Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez, Joshua Javier Guzmán, Anita Huizar-Hernández, Kelley Kreitz, Rodrigo Lazo, Maris
£16.14
Duke University Press Decolonizing Ethnography
Book SynopsisThe coauthors of Decolonizing Ethnography integrate ethnography with activist work in a New Jersey center for undocumented workers, showing how anthropology can function as a vehicle for activism and as a tool for marginalized people to theorize their own experiences.Trade Review"[Decolonizing Ethnography] offers an innovative way in which ethnography, practiced by the people who have been traditionally positioned as the ethnographic research objects, can be a powerful tool of self-empowerment, public advocacy, and personal transformation." -- Kheira Arrouche * LSE Review of Books *"Decolonizing Ethnography does not just critique colonialist academic practices, it seeks to do something different. ... Accessibly written, interesting, and effectively argued, [this book] will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in issues of migration, activism, ethnography, and knowledge production. ... Perhaps most importantly, Decolonizing Ethnography is a call to anthropology to reconsider its purpose and expand its relevance with research practices that redress the politicized nature of anthropological research and of the social worlds in which our research takes place." -- Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz * Anthropological Quarterly *"This work demonstrates specifically an exemplary form of ethnographic writing not necessarily as a model to follow, but as an encouragement and license to expand the direction of critical and reflexive thought that has been ascendant in American ethnographic research for the past 30 years. There are many lively 'moves' in expressing the vitality of this collaboration, none more powerful and exciting than the concluding script of activist theater. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- G. E. Marcus * Choice *"For occupational science as a field of study increasingly concerned with highlighting the daily experiences of Global South and marginalised groups, this book should be a valuable inspiration and guide. As a Eurocentric discipline, we have a way to go in decolonising theory production and the means by which we do so. This text may inspire us to continue on the path of liberation for our discipline and the communities with whom we study and collaborate." -- Juman Simaan * Journal of Occupational Science *“Decolonizing Ethnography provides an excellent background on engaged scholarship and a roadmap for how one team overcame hierarchies to collaborate across difference. It is an excellent tool for training students to design community-embedded research and will be useful for a range of syllabi (it’s already on mine!). The book also offers the rare chance to see undocumented worker-activists as scholars and authors, and that itself is a gift.” -- Abigail Andrews * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“As a collaboration, this book both advocates for and puts into practice data gathering and reporting techniques that continue to stand in opposition to anthropology’s standard modes of research. The book’s clarity of writing, its resolute tone had this reviewer conduct some soul-searching about her own position vis-à-vis the decolonial challenge.” -- Nora Haenn * Anthropos *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] is encouraging us to open our minds, addressing the colonial impact in academia, to decolonize and liberate ourselves from intellectual and academic colonization. This is a call for anthropologists to empower others to speak for themselves....” -- Hussein Masimbi and Paula Uimonen * Anthropology Book Forum *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] discusses how to use anthropological knowledge to advance the causes of undocumented migrants in the United States. . . . [It] take[s] the bold step of centralizing migrants’ stories, dilemmas, and choices, and . . . reminds us that each story is unique with endings that are impossible to know.” -- Ana Hontanilla * Latin American Research Review *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] presents a wonderful examination of the development of a research project through partnership. . . . In an ethnographic analysis that is a cut way above most contemporary anthropology, [the book’s] four participants share their hopes and problems in joint project planning, implementation, writing, and publishing.” -- Thomas M. Wilson * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of Contents"broken poem" ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. Colonial Anthropology and Its Alternatives 17 2. Journeys toward Decolonizing 38 3. Reflections on Fieldwork in New Jersey 59 4. Undocumented Activist Theory and a Decolonial Methodology 78 5. Undocumented Theater: Writing and Resistance 101 Conclusion 136 Notes 149 References 161 Index 179
£70.55
Duke University Press Insurgent Aesthetics
Book SynopsisRonak K. Kapadia examines multimedia visual art by artists from societies besieged by the US war on terror, showing how their art offers queer feminist critiques of US global warfare that forge new aesthetic and social alliances with which to sustain critical opposition to the global war machine.Trade Review“At its core, Insurgent Aesthetics reminds us that war and security are—despite the modern ideologies that would declare otherwise—fundamentally racialized social practices that seek to manage their violence in everyday life through controlling what can be felt and known. By looking at the ways diasporic communities interfere with sovereign and statist logics that conserve the knowledge of loss for the national community alone, this exquisitely written book powerfully argues for the insurgent abilities of culture to interrupt, deform, and repopulate our felt and known worlds in ways that force a reckoning and connection with the racialized death and detritus that US security at once creates and tries to disappear.” -- Chandan Reddy, author of * Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the U.S. State *“With its sharp interrogation of US warfare, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism, Insurgent Aesthetics introduces ‘queer calculus’ as an analytic that focuses on the racial violences of US empire and its forever war. By attending to the sensuous, and to the creative praxis and interventions of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists, Insurgent Aesthetics is a powerful, queer feminist study of life under US empire. Importantly, Ronak K. Kapadia demonstrates how insurgent strategies of solidarity and rebellion can trouble empire's methodologies and move us toward freedom.” -- Simone Browne, author of * Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness *“ Insurgent Aesthetics is a theoretically-rich piece of cultural studies. … The book offers a powerful reading of art inspired by, and produced during, the post-9/11 era of US military aggression and colonization.” -- Brian Donovan * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“There is much to be learned from Kapadia, whose ambitious monograph traffics between a profound appreciation for the ramifications of US imperialism, an eye for congruencies between divergent strains of comparative ethnic studies, and an enthusiasm for the critical talents of minoritarian cultural production.” -- Eric Vazquez * Lateral *"Fascinating and innovative.... Kapadia’s book is beautifully constructed not only intellectually in the breadth and depth of its analyses but also physically: it is richly illustrated with many of the artistic works that he discusses, a number in full-colour plates.... What is perhaps most important about the book is its insistence that art does not only offer critical perspectives on surveillance and securitization but also brings out the extent to which surveillance practices are themselves inextricably grounded in visual and aesthetic practices." -- Robert Heynen * Surveillance & Society *"Insurgent Aesthetics’s argument about the violence of visuality and the capacity of artists to rethink the aesthetics of warfare track through the entire book; however, each chapter and all the art objects feel fresh and different from the previous. The arguments are sustained also by the inclusion of many colour images from each artist discussed. The book belongs in visual, art, media and performance studies classrooms, as much as in social science contexts studying globalisation, war and imperialism." -- Kareem Khubchandani * Bioscope *"Insurgent Aesthetics is a dazzling contribution to a number of fields. . . . It is a model of scholarly composition, depth and breadth, grace and nuance. It would also be a welcome model for students and scholars across the humanities for its organization, style, substance, analysis, and beauty. But more importantly, Kapadia’s queer calculus is a methodology that can help ensure we don’t become numb from the gas that now governs so much of the world and shows us that our tears may lead to some, new unknown place of collective freedom for all." -- Stephen Dillon * Cultural Studies *“Kapadia has done profound justice to the cultural workers that he features—and his book is a welcome contribution to knowledge production and a living example of what true intersectional scholarship looks like.... Insurgent Aesthetics is itself aesthetically breathtakingly beautiful as a text—and insurgent.” -- Sa'ed Atshan * Arab Studies Quarterly *“As Kapadia points out, many of the artists whose works he explores do not have the kind of mainstream recognition they should have in the international art world. [H]is careful reading of the artists’ works is a model for how an art critic can (and should) write about works by artists with complex genealogies.” -- Alpesh Kantilal Patel * GLQ *"The immensely generative and imaginative work by Ronak Kapadia in Insurgent Aesthetics is of great value for those working within and at the inter- sections of numerous fields; artists of colour will particularly benefit from Kapadia’s expansive readings and theories of contemporary conceptual, performance, and visual art by an essential set of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists and cultural workers." -- Balbir Singh * Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Sensuous Affiliations: Security, Terror, and the Queer Calculus of the Forever War 1 1. Up in the Air: US Aerial Power and the Visual Life of Empire in the Drone Age 44 2. On the Skin: Drone Warfare, Collateral Damage, and the Human Terrain 76 3. Empire's Innards: Conjuring "Warm Data" in the Archives of US Global Military Detention 103 4. Palestine(s) in the Sky: Visionary Aesthetics and Queer Cosmic Utopias from the Frontiers of US Empire 151 Epilogue. Scaling Empire: Insurgent Aesthetics n the Wilds of Imperial Decline 187 Notes 203 Bibliography 271 Index 321
£75.65
Duke University Press Decolonizing Ethnography
Book SynopsisIn August2011, ethnographers Carolina Alonso Bejarano and Daniel M. Goldstein began a research project on undocumented immigration in the United States by volunteering at a center for migrant workers in New Jersey. Two years later, Lucia López Juárez and Mirian A. Mijangos García—two local immigrant workers from Latin America—joined Alonso Bejarano and Goldstein as research assistants and quickly became equal partners for whom ethnographic practice was inseparable from activism. In Decolonizing Ethnography the four coauthors offer a methodological and theoretical reassessment of social science research, showing how it can function as a vehicle for activism and as a tool for marginalized people to theorize their lives. Tacking between personal narratives, ethnographic field notes, an original bilingual play about workers'' rights, and examinations of anthropology as a discipline, the coauthors show how the participation of Mijangos Garc&iacutTrade Review"[Decolonizing Ethnography] offers an innovative way in which ethnography, practiced by the people who have been traditionally positioned as the ethnographic research objects, can be a powerful tool of self-empowerment, public advocacy, and personal transformation." -- Kheira Arrouche * LSE Review of Books *"Decolonizing Ethnography does not just critique colonialist academic practices, it seeks to do something different. ... Accessibly written, interesting, and effectively argued, [this book] will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in issues of migration, activism, ethnography, and knowledge production. ... Perhaps most importantly, Decolonizing Ethnography is a call to anthropology to reconsider its purpose and expand its relevance with research practices that redress the politicized nature of anthropological research and of the social worlds in which our research takes place." -- Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz * Anthropological Quarterly *"This work demonstrates specifically an exemplary form of ethnographic writing not necessarily as a model to follow, but as an encouragement and license to expand the direction of critical and reflexive thought that has been ascendant in American ethnographic research for the past 30 years. There are many lively 'moves' in expressing the vitality of this collaboration, none more powerful and exciting than the concluding script of activist theater. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- G. E. Marcus * Choice *"For occupational science as a field of study increasingly concerned with highlighting the daily experiences of Global South and marginalised groups, this book should be a valuable inspiration and guide. As a Eurocentric discipline, we have a way to go in decolonising theory production and the means by which we do so. This text may inspire us to continue on the path of liberation for our discipline and the communities with whom we study and collaborate." -- Juman Simaan * Journal of Occupational Science *“Decolonizing Ethnography provides an excellent background on engaged scholarship and a roadmap for how one team overcame hierarchies to collaborate across difference. It is an excellent tool for training students to design community-embedded research and will be useful for a range of syllabi (it’s already on mine!). The book also offers the rare chance to see undocumented worker-activists as scholars and authors, and that itself is a gift.” -- Abigail Andrews * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“As a collaboration, this book both advocates for and puts into practice data gathering and reporting techniques that continue to stand in opposition to anthropology’s standard modes of research. The book’s clarity of writing, its resolute tone had this reviewer conduct some soul-searching about her own position vis-à-vis the decolonial challenge.” -- Nora Haenn * Anthropos *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] is encouraging us to open our minds, addressing the colonial impact in academia, to decolonize and liberate ourselves from intellectual and academic colonization. This is a call for anthropologists to empower others to speak for themselves....” -- Hussein Masimbi and Paula Uimonen * Anthropology Book Forum *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] discusses how to use anthropological knowledge to advance the causes of undocumented migrants in the United States. . . . [It] take[s] the bold step of centralizing migrants’ stories, dilemmas, and choices, and . . . reminds us that each story is unique with endings that are impossible to know.” -- Ana Hontanilla * Latin American Research Review *“[Decolonizing Ethnography] presents a wonderful examination of the development of a research project through partnership. . . . In an ethnographic analysis that is a cut way above most contemporary anthropology, [the book’s] four participants share their hopes and problems in joint project planning, implementation, writing, and publishing.” -- Thomas M. Wilson * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of Contents"broken poem" ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. Colonial Anthropology and Its Alternatives 17 2. Journeys toward Decolonizing 38 3. Reflections on Fieldwork in New Jersey 59 4. Undocumented Activist Theory and a Decolonial Methodology 78 5. Undocumented Theater: Writing and Resistance 101 Conclusion 136 Notes 149 References 161 Index 179
£18.99
Duke University Press Insurgent Aesthetics Security and the Queer Life
Book SynopsisRonak K. Kapadia examines multimedia visual art by artists from societies besieged by the US war on terror, showing how their art offers queer feminist critiques of US global warfare that forge new aesthetic and social alliances with which to sustain critical opposition to the global war machine.Trade Review“At its core, Insurgent Aesthetics reminds us that war and security are—despite the modern ideologies that would declare otherwise—fundamentally racialized social practices that seek to manage their violence in everyday life through controlling what can be felt and known. By looking at the ways diasporic communities interfere with sovereign and statist logics that conserve the knowledge of loss for the national community alone, this exquisitely written book powerfully argues for the insurgent abilities of culture to interrupt, deform, and repopulate our felt and known worlds in ways that force a reckoning and connection with the racialized death and detritus that US security at once creates and tries to disappear.” -- Chandan Reddy, author of * Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the U.S. State *“With its sharp interrogation of US warfare, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism, Insurgent Aesthetics introduces ‘queer calculus’ as an analytic that focuses on the racial violences of US empire and its forever war. By attending to the sensuous, and to the creative praxis and interventions of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists, Insurgent Aesthetics is a powerful, queer feminist study of life under US empire. Importantly, Ronak K. Kapadia demonstrates how insurgent strategies of solidarity and rebellion can trouble empire's methodologies and move us toward freedom.” -- Simone Browne, author of * Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness *“ Insurgent Aesthetics is a theoretically-rich piece of cultural studies. … The book offers a powerful reading of art inspired by, and produced during, the post-9/11 era of US military aggression and colonization.” -- Brian Donovan * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“There is much to be learned from Kapadia, whose ambitious monograph traffics between a profound appreciation for the ramifications of US imperialism, an eye for congruencies between divergent strains of comparative ethnic studies, and an enthusiasm for the critical talents of minoritarian cultural production.” -- Eric Vazquez * Lateral *"Fascinating and innovative.... Kapadia’s book is beautifully constructed not only intellectually in the breadth and depth of its analyses but also physically: it is richly illustrated with many of the artistic works that he discusses, a number in full-colour plates.... What is perhaps most important about the book is its insistence that art does not only offer critical perspectives on surveillance and securitization but also brings out the extent to which surveillance practices are themselves inextricably grounded in visual and aesthetic practices." -- Robert Heynen * Surveillance & Society *"Insurgent Aesthetics’s argument about the violence of visuality and the capacity of artists to rethink the aesthetics of warfare track through the entire book; however, each chapter and all the art objects feel fresh and different from the previous. The arguments are sustained also by the inclusion of many colour images from each artist discussed. The book belongs in visual, art, media and performance studies classrooms, as much as in social science contexts studying globalisation, war and imperialism." -- Kareem Khubchandani * Bioscope *"Insurgent Aesthetics is a dazzling contribution to a number of fields. . . . It is a model of scholarly composition, depth and breadth, grace and nuance. It would also be a welcome model for students and scholars across the humanities for its organization, style, substance, analysis, and beauty. But more importantly, Kapadia’s queer calculus is a methodology that can help ensure we don’t become numb from the gas that now governs so much of the world and shows us that our tears may lead to some, new unknown place of collective freedom for all." -- Stephen Dillon * Cultural Studies *“Kapadia has done profound justice to the cultural workers that he features—and his book is a welcome contribution to knowledge production and a living example of what true intersectional scholarship looks like.... Insurgent Aesthetics is itself aesthetically breathtakingly beautiful as a text—and insurgent.” -- Sa'ed Atshan * Arab Studies Quarterly *“As Kapadia points out, many of the artists whose works he explores do not have the kind of mainstream recognition they should have in the international art world. [H]is careful reading of the artists’ works is a model for how an art critic can (and should) write about works by artists with complex genealogies.” -- Alpesh Kantilal Patel * GLQ *"The immensely generative and imaginative work by Ronak Kapadia in Insurgent Aesthetics is of great value for those working within and at the inter- sections of numerous fields; artists of colour will particularly benefit from Kapadia’s expansive readings and theories of contemporary conceptual, performance, and visual art by an essential set of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists and cultural workers." -- Balbir Singh * Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Sensuous Affiliations: Security, Terror, and the Queer Calculus of the Forever War 1 1. Up in the Air: US Aerial Power and the Visual Life of Empire in the Drone Age 44 2. On the Skin: Drone Warfare, Collateral Damage, and the Human Terrain 76 3. Empire's Innards: Conjuring "Warm Data" in the Archives of US Global Military Detention 103 4. Palestine(s) in the Sky: Visionary Aesthetics and Queer Cosmic Utopias from the Frontiers of US Empire 151 Epilogue. Scaling Empire: Insurgent Aesthetics n the Wilds of Imperial Decline 187 Notes 203 Bibliography 271 Index 321
£21.59
Duke University Press Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film examine the place and role of race in educational films, home movies, industry and government films, anthropological films, church films, and other forms of noncommercial filmmaking throughout the twentieth century.Trade Review“Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film illuminates what is hidden right in front of us. Like cable or YouTube today, nontheatrical films have left evidence of a broader expression beyond commercial films and examining them through the lens of race gives us a peek into a less homogenous and more realistic world. This collection of essays reminds us to reclaim this space as culturally valuable and, in a sense, take the power back by shifting perspective to explore an overlooked reality, not a marginal one.” -- Shola Lynch, Curator, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library“This collection of essays—with its range of topics and archival discoveries—is essential reading for anyone committed to, or even remotely interested in, the study of cinema. Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film uncovers buried treasures that are part of the long-standing tradition of moving image storytelling—a tradition that did not always aspire to mainstream Hollywood recognition, but succeeded alongside it.” -- Rhea L. Combs, Curator of Photography and Film and Director of the Center for African American Media Arts, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture"Brimming with sharp insights and archival discoveries, this valuable book opens up a world unknown to most and offers a look at American society in the 20th century, far from the artificial gloss of Hollywood cinema." -- W. W. Dixon * Choice *“An informative collection of works, the volume deftly illustrates the breadth, reach, and influence of nontheatrical films that centre race and ethnicity. As a bonus, a rich collection of videos discussed in the book is available for use in classrooms, particularly for instructors of film or race and ethnic studies who desire to use movies to explore specific themes…. Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film serves as a handy reference for scholars, researchers, and students and as a helpful reminder of the hidden gems showcased outside the theatre.” -- Maryann Mamie Erigha * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film not only...opens up a number of exciting avenues for future research, but also provides readers with the concrete steps, tools and materials needed to continue this work. I hope that this volume will serve as a productive starting point for many future studies.” -- Carolyn Condon Jacobs * Screen *Table of ContentsNote on the Companion Website ix Foreword. Giving Voice, Taking Voice: Nonwhite and Nontheatrical / Jacqueline Najuma Stewart xi Acknowledgments xxv Introduction / Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon 1 1. "A Vanishing Race"? The Native American Films of J. K. Nixon / Caitlin McGrath 29 2. "Regardless of Race, Color, or Creed": Filming the Henry Street Settlement Visiting Nurse Service, 1924–1933 / Tanya Goldman 51 3. "I'll See You in Church": Local Films in African American Communities, 1924–1962 / Martin L. Johnson 71 4. The Politics of Vanishing Celluloid: Fort Rupert (1951) and the Kwakwaka'wakw in American Ethnographic Film / Colin Williamson 92 5. Red Star/Black Star: The Early Career of Film Editor Hortense "Tee" Beveridge, 1948–1968 / Walter Forsberg 112 6. Charles and Ray Eames's Day of the Dead (1957): Mexican Folk Art, Educational Film and Chicana/o Art / Colin Gunkel 136 7. Ever-Widening Horizons? The National Urban League and the Pathologization of Blackness in A Morning for Jimmy (1960) / Michelle Kelley 157 8. "A Touch of the Orient": Negotiating Japanese American Identity in The Challenge (1957) / Todd Kushigemachi and Dino Everett 175 9. "I Have My Choice": Behind Every Good Man (1967) and the Black Queer Subject in American Nontheatrical Film / Noah Tsika 194 10. Televising Watts: Joe Saltzman's Black on Black (1968) on KNXT / Joshua Glick 217 11. "A New Sense of Black Awareness"? Navigating Expectations in The Black Cop (1969) / Travis L. Wagner and Mark Garrett Cooper 236 12. "Don't Be a Segregationist: Program Films for Everyone": The New York Public Library's Film Library and Youth Film Workshops / Elena Rossi-Snook and Lauren Tilton 253 13. Teenage Moviemaking in the Lower East Side: The Rivington Street Film Club, 1966–1974 / Noelle Griffis 271 14. Ro-Revus Talks about Race: South Carolina Malnutrition and Parasite Films, 1968–1975 / Dan Streible 290 15. Government-Sponsored Film and Latinidad: Voice of La Raza (1973) / Laura Isabel Serna 313 16. An Aesthetics of Multiculturalism: Asian American Assimilation and the Learning Corporation of America's Many Americans Series (1970–1982) / Nadine Chan 333 17. "The Right Kind of Family": Memories to Light and the Home Movie as Racialized Technology / Crystal Mun-Hye Baik 353 18. Black Home Movies: Time to Represent / Jasmyn R. Castro 372 Selected Bibliography 392 Contributors 401 Index 403
£112.20
Duke University Press Fictions of Land and Flesh
Book SynopsisMark Rifkin turns to black and indigenous speculative fiction to show how it offers a site to better understand black and indigenous political movements' differing orientations in ways that can foster forms of mutual engagement and cooperation without subsuming them into a single political framework in the name of solidarity.Trade Review“Fictions of Land and Flesh considers the points at which Black and Indigenous studies might relate across histories and struggles. It does so with an eye toward the necessity of that engagement and the danger of conflating the urgencies that constitute those histories and struggles. With characteristic brilliance and creativity, Mark Rifkin turns to Black and Indigenous futurist work as a way to produce that difficult but necessary dialogue.” -- Roderick A. Ferguson, author of * One-Dimensional Queer *“Anchored in the contemporary movements of #NoDAPL and Black Lives Matter, Fictions of Land and Flesh is a welcome and expert guide to thinking through the resonances and impasses that attend Black and Indigenous articulations of justice. Essential reading in American studies.” -- Beth H. Piatote, author of * Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. On the Impasse 15 2. Fungible Becoming 73 3. Carceral Space and Fugitive Motion 117 4. The Maroon Matrix 168 Coda: Diplomacy in the Undercommons 220 Notes 233 Bibliography 287 Index 313
£98.60
Duke University Press Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film examine the place and role of race in educational films, home movies, industry and government films, anthropological films, church films, and other forms of noncommercial filmmaking throughout the twentieth century.Trade Review“Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film illuminates what is hidden right in front of us. Like cable or YouTube today, nontheatrical films have left evidence of a broader expression beyond commercial films and examining them through the lens of race gives us a peek into a less homogenous and more realistic world. This collection of essays reminds us to reclaim this space as culturally valuable and, in a sense, take the power back by shifting perspective to explore an overlooked reality, not a marginal one.” -- Shola Lynch, Curator, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library“This collection of essays—with its range of topics and archival discoveries—is essential reading for anyone committed to, or even remotely interested in, the study of cinema. Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film uncovers buried treasures that are part of the long-standing tradition of moving image storytelling—a tradition that did not always aspire to mainstream Hollywood recognition, but succeeded alongside it.” -- Rhea L. Combs, Curator of Photography and Film and Director of the Center for African American Media Arts, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture"Brimming with sharp insights and archival discoveries, this valuable book opens up a world unknown to most and offers a look at American society in the 20th century, far from the artificial gloss of Hollywood cinema." -- W. W. Dixon * Choice *“An informative collection of works, the volume deftly illustrates the breadth, reach, and influence of nontheatrical films that centre race and ethnicity. As a bonus, a rich collection of videos discussed in the book is available for use in classrooms, particularly for instructors of film or race and ethnic studies who desire to use movies to explore specific themes…. Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film serves as a handy reference for scholars, researchers, and students and as a helpful reminder of the hidden gems showcased outside the theatre.” -- Maryann Mamie Erigha * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film not only...opens up a number of exciting avenues for future research, but also provides readers with the concrete steps, tools and materials needed to continue this work. I hope that this volume will serve as a productive starting point for many future studies.” -- Carolyn Condon Jacobs * Screen *Table of ContentsNote on the Companion Website ix Foreword. Giving Voice, Taking Voice: Nonwhite and Nontheatrical / Jacqueline Najuma Stewart xi Acknowledgments xxv Introduction / Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon 1 1. "A Vanishing Race"? The Native American Films of J. K. Nixon / Caitlin McGrath 29 2. "Regardless of Race, Color, or Creed": Filming the Henry Street Settlement Visiting Nurse Service, 1924–1933 / Tanya Goldman 51 3. "I'll See You in Church": Local Films in African American Communities, 1924–1962 / Martin L. Johnson 71 4. The Politics of Vanishing Celluloid: Fort Rupert (1951) and the Kwakwaka'wakw in American Ethnographic Film / Colin Williamson 92 5. Red Star/Black Star: The Early Career of Film Editor Hortense "Tee" Beveridge, 1948–1968 / Walter Forsberg 112 6. Charles and Ray Eames's Day of the Dead (1957): Mexican Folk Art, Educational Film and Chicana/o Art / Colin Gunkel 136 7. Ever-Widening Horizons? The National Urban League and the Pathologization of Blackness in A Morning for Jimmy (1960) / Michelle Kelley 157 8. "A Touch of the Orient": Negotiating Japanese American Identity in The Challenge (1957) / Todd Kushigemachi and Dino Everett 175 9. "I Have My Choice": Behind Every Good Man (1967) and the Black Queer Subject in American Nontheatrical Film / Noah Tsika 194 10. Televising Watts: Joe Saltzman's Black on Black (1968) on KNXT / Joshua Glick 217 11. "A New Sense of Black Awareness"? Navigating Expectations in The Black Cop (1969) / Travis L. Wagner and Mark Garrett Cooper 236 12. "Don't Be a Segregationist: Program Films for Everyone": The New York Public Library's Film Library and Youth Film Workshops / Elena Rossi-Snook and Lauren Tilton 253 13. Teenage Moviemaking in the Lower East Side: The Rivington Street Film Club, 1966–1974 / Noelle Griffis 271 14. Ro-Revus Talks about Race: South Carolina Malnutrition and Parasite Films, 1968–1975 / Dan Streible 290 15. Government-Sponsored Film and Latinidad: Voice of La Raza (1973) / Laura Isabel Serna 313 16. An Aesthetics of Multiculturalism: Asian American Assimilation and the Learning Corporation of America's Many Americans Series (1970–1982) / Nadine Chan 333 17. "The Right Kind of Family": Memories to Light and the Home Movie as Racialized Technology / Crystal Mun-Hye Baik 353 18. Black Home Movies: Time to Represent / Jasmyn R. Castro 372 Selected Bibliography 392 Contributors 401 Index 403
£27.90
Duke University Press Fictions of Land and Flesh
Book SynopsisMark Rifkin turns to black and indigenous speculative fiction to show how it offers a site to better understand black and indigenous political movements' differing orientations in ways that can foster forms of mutual engagement and cooperation without subsuming them into a single political framework in the name of solidarity.Trade Review“Fictions of Land and Flesh considers the points at which Black and Indigenous studies might relate across histories and struggles. It does so with an eye toward the necessity of that engagement and the danger of conflating the urgencies that constitute those histories and struggles. With characteristic brilliance and creativity, Mark Rifkin turns to Black and Indigenous futurist work as a way to produce that difficult but necessary dialogue.” -- Roderick A. Ferguson, author of * One-Dimensional Queer *“Anchored in the contemporary movements of #NoDAPL and Black Lives Matter, Fictions of Land and Flesh is a welcome and expert guide to thinking through the resonances and impasses that attend Black and Indigenous articulations of justice. Essential reading in American studies.” -- Beth H. Piatote, author of * Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. On the Impasse 15 2. Fungible Becoming 73 3. Carceral Space and Fugitive Motion 117 4. The Maroon Matrix 168 Coda: Diplomacy in the Undercommons 220 Notes 233 Bibliography 287 Index 313
£25.19
Duke University Press The Black Shoals
Book SynopsisTiffany Lethabo King uses the shoalan offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor seaas metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter between Black studies and Native studies and its potential to create new epistemologies, forms of practice, and lines of critical inquiry.Trade Review"Tiffany Lethabo King's concept of the shoal breaks new ground for thinking through the relationships between Indigenous peoples and African Americans and genocide and slavery as well as how they have formed our contemporary politics. Her rigorous engagement with Black and Indigenous studies will create a better dialogue between the two fields." -- Mishauna Goeman, author of * Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations *“In this innovative contribution to both Black and Native studies, Tiffany Lethabo King dares to think the simultaneously distinct yet edgeless relationship between Blackness and Indigeneity. It's the geological formation of the shoal—that zone just offshore, neither land (often reductively linked to the Native) nor sea (often reductively linked to the Black)—that allows King to pull off this ethical project. Indeed, The Black Shoals is Black ethics, where the ethical emerges as that distinct, ever-developing gathering of Black and Native life under shared conditions of settler terror.” -- J. Kameron Carter, Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University“King’s scholarship represents a masterful mix of precision and sensitivity in describing the historical Native anti-blackness, as well as the historical cooperation between Africans and the European settlers King identifies as ‘conquistador humans,’ in dispossessing Natives of their land.” -- Darryl Barthé * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“King’s book is an important participant in a small but growing scholarly movement seeking to understand and unravel the logics of settler colonialism and conquest by breaking down scholarly silos between groups that frequently interacted and interact. Moreover, what King has so well begun can be built on by other scholars.” -- Laura Goldblatt * Lateral *“Tiffany King’s poetic and theoretically compelling text is both an invitation and disturbance, or a provocation to be unmoored, to be thrown into chaos and to place one’s feet at the shoal of something other than traditional (normative) notions of sovereignty, nation, and citizenship.” -- Shanya Cordis * GLQ *“A multivocal, wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary project, . . . Tiffany Lethabo King’s book is both timely and prescient. . . . For those who would like to explore Black and Indigenous thought, especially the conceptual and methodological overlaps between the two fields, this book is an exceptional primer.” -- Michael J. Kennedy * The Black Scholar *“The Black Shoals offers a rich analysis of how scholars, activists, and artists have contended with conquest, conquistador-settler epistemologies, and Black-Native relations. . . . King’s ‘shoal’ offers an analytic through which to theorize what ethical and sustained exchanges between Black studies and Native studies might look like.” -- Mary McNeil * Native American and Indigenous Studies *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Black Shoals 1 1. Errant Grammars: Defacing the Ceremony 36 2. The Map (Settlement) and the Territory (The Incompleteness of Conquest) 74 3. At the Pores of the Plantation 111 4. Our Cherokee Uncles: Black and Native Erotics 141 5. A Ceremony for Sycorax 175 Epilogue: Of Water and Land 207 Notes 211 Bibliography 263 Index 277
£75.65
Duke University Press Are You Entertained
Book SynopsisIn this collection of essays, interviews, visual art, and artist statements on topics ranging from music and dance to Black Twitter and the NBA's dress code, the contributors consider what culture and Blackness mean in the twenty-first century's digital consumer economy.Trade Review“Are You Entertained? is a thoughtfully constructed collection of scholarly work on blackness and subjectivity and their constant tensions with popular culture and mass media. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson do a superb job of weaving together these shards of insightful criticism and analysis into a tapestry of fascinating commentary by some of the most dynamic voices in the field.” -- John Jennings, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside"The book is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary field of African American studies as well as to literature and sociology and to the overall study of performance, culture, media, and Blackness. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals." -- T. N. Allen * Choice *“Are you Entertained? is an immensely generative model and guide for doing sharp and powerful work in Black studies. It makes a case for why Black cultural studies matter by pinpointing the liberatory potential of Black popular culture in and for our current lives.” -- Elliott H. Powell * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 I. Performing Blackness 1. "Mutts Like Me": Mixed-Race Jokes and Post-Racial Rejection in the Obama Era / Ralina L. Joseph 29 2. Black Radio: Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, and Janelle Monáe / Emily J. Lordi 44 3. Camping and Vamping across Borders: Locating Cabaret Singers in the Black Cultural Spectrum / Vincent Stephens 58 4. The Art of Black Popular Culture / H. Ike Okafor-Newsum 77 5. Interview / Lisa B. Thompson 91 II. Politicizing Blackness 6. Refashioning Political Cartoons: Comics of Jackie Ormes 1938–1958 / Kelly Jo Fulkerson-Dikuua 101 7. Queer Kinship and Worldmaking in Black Queer Web Series: Drama Queenz and No Shade / Eric Darnell Pritchard 118 8. Styling and Profiling: Ballers, Blackness, and the Sartorial Politics of the NBA / David J. Leonard 134 9. Interview / Tracy Sharpley-Whiting 153 III. Owning Blackness 10. The Subaltern Is Signifyin(g): Black Twitter as a Site of Resistance / Sheneese Thompson 161 11. Authentic Black Cool?: Branding and Trademarks in Contemporary African American Culture / Richard Schur 175 12. Black Culture without Black People: Hip-Hop Dance beyond Appropriation Discourse / Imani Kai Johnson 191 13. At the Corner of Chaos and Divine: Black Ritual Theater, Performance, and Politics / Nina Angela Mercer 207 14. Interview / Mark Anthony Neal 229 IV. Loving Blackness 15. The Booty Don't Lie: Pleasure, Agency, and Resistance in Black Popular Dance / Takiyah Nur Amin 237 16. He Said Nothing: Sonic Space and the Production of Quietude in Barry Jenkins's Moonlight / Simone C. Drake 252 17. Black Women Readers and the Uses of Urban Fiction / Kinohi Nishikawa 268 18. Interview / Patricia Hill Collins 288 Contributors 301 Index 307
£98.60
Duke University Press Unreconciled
Book SynopsisAndrea Smith examines the racial reconciliation movement in Evangelical Christianity through a critical ethnic studies lens, evaluating the varying degrees to which Evangelical communities that were founded on white supremacy have attempted to address racism and become more inclusive.Trade Review“For women of color, in particular, who have been laboring to disrupt the racially and sexually oppressive policies and practices of evangelical organizations, Andrea Smith communicates ‘I see you.’ The way that she does this gives credence to the Sisyphean burden undertaken by women of color who are employing progressive intersectional frameworks in evangelical spaces. Smith manages to impart a sense of hope, demonstrating how the very presence of people of color within evangelical spaces can serve to destabilize white heterosexist patriarchal power.” -- Chanequa Walker-Barnes, author of * I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation *“Offering the first cultural history of the evangelical racial justice movement that is subversively and gradually changing the face of politics in the United States, Andrea Smith argues that whiteness is the heart of the problem of American evangelicalism. Upon reading Unreconciled, scholars of religion and politics will need to rethink what they mean by evangelicals, racial reconciliation, and progressive politics. This brilliant book is a must-read for all thoughtful Americans.” -- Peter Goodwin Heltzel, author of * Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics *"Unreconciled is an informative read for scholars of contemporary religion, critical ethnic studies, and evangelical theology alike. In light of the global Black Lives Matter movements of 2020 and the rising interest in conversations on race and religion, the book’s in-depth coverage of a wide variety of racial injustice and racial reconciliation ideologies and movements within contemporary Christian evangelicalism is both urgent and informative." -- Flora X. Tang * Religion and Gender *"Smith’s book pries both critical ethnic studies and Christian evangelicalism from their presumed positions within the academy and the hands of white conservatives, respectively. In doing so, Smith presents valuable theoretical critique where the academy does not usually look for it and further demonstrates the usefulness of a critical ethnic studies framework outside the academy and across political and religious contexts." -- Allie Arend * Religious Studies Review *
£90.25
Duke University Press Beneath the Surface
Book SynopsisFor more than a century, skin lighteners have been a ubiquitous feature of global popular culture-embraced by consumers even as they were fiercely opposed by medical professionals, consumer health advocates, and antiracist thinkers and activists. In Beneath the Surface, Lynn M. Thomas constructs a transnational history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond. Analyzing a wide range of archival, popular culture, and oral history sources, Thomas traces the changing meanings of skin color from precolonial times to the postcolonial present. From indigenous skin-brightening practices and the rapid spread of lighteners in South African consumer culture during the 1940s and 1950s to the growth of a billion-dollar global lightener industry, Thomas shows how the use of skin lighteners and experiences of skin color have been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and segregation as well as by consumer capitalism, visual media, notions of beauty, and protest politics. In teasing out lighteners' layered history, Thomas theorizes skin as a site for antiracist struggle and lighteners as a technology of visibility that both challenges and entrenches racial and gender hierarchies.Trade Review“Beneath the Surface is nothing short of a tour de force. Lynn M. Thomas's ‘layered history’ does justice to the immensely difficult subject of skin lighteners. Carefully attending to the complex politics of race and color that are grounded in skin, Thomas at once provides a vibrant history of South Africa and a global history of commodity, beauty, and the body. This landmark study sets a new standard in the field.” -- Julie Livingston, author of * Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa *“Allowing for a comparative analysis over a period of time when the global relationships and meanings of skin color became tied to class, race, and racism, Beneath the Surface helps us understand the intense and long-standing interest whites and blacks have had in lightening the color of their skin despite the potential for severe health risks. There is simply no other book like it.” -- Noliwe M. Rooks, author of * Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women *"Beneath the Surface makes a necessary contribution to [a] small pool of work on beauty and geography as Thomas' analysis integrates these subjects in considering the (trans)national politics and racial inequalities that uphold skin lightening.… This book would appeal to both undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars interested in beauty, geopolitics, race, and colonialism." -- Meena Pyatt * Gender, Place & Culture *“Thomas resourcefully assembles and interweaves sources connecting popular, business, medical and political culture. …. Beneath the Surface would be an engaging key text for students to study a history of race and gender within everyday global beauty cultures.” -- Fabiola Creed * Metascience *"Beneath the Surface is the most comprehensive book regarding skin lighteners available to date and it is both interesting and innovative.… The book has value as a postgraduate textbook relevant to the fields of history, social science, geopolitics, gender studies, geography, psychology, dermatology, and others. The layered, integrated history presented by Thomas in Beneath the Surface is indeed 'a landmark study' of skin colour and skin lighteners that interrogates every influencing factor from slavery and segregation to consumer capitalism, political protests and reinforced social inequities, and beyond." -- Caradee White * South African Journal of Science *"Lynn Thomas’s Beneath the Surface constructs a history of skin lighteners that is simultaneously rigorous in its historical evidence base and virtuosic in its lucid articulation of the technologies as they are mobilised in complex contexts in and beyond South Africa. . . . Its biopolitical argument is convincingly made and compelling." -- Vivette Garcia-Deister * BioSocieties *"This is an impressive book that will surely be a classic for scholars interested in aesthetics, beauty politics, and gender. It is an especially welcome addition to the literature as it centers on African history from a transnational perspective. It also has much to offer those with specialization in the history of science, medicine, and technology." -- Oluwakemi M. Balogun * Journal of African History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix A Layered History 1 1. Cosmetic Practices and Colonial Crucibles 22 2. Modern Girls and Racial Respectability 47 3. Local Manufacturing and Color Consciousness 75 4. Beauty Queens and Consumer Capitalism 98 5. Active Ingredients and Growing Criticism 150 6. Black Consciousness and Biomedical Opposition 190 Sedimented Meanings and Compounded Politics 221 Notes 237 Bibliography 293 Index
£140.25
Duke University Press Dub
Book SynopsisThe concluding volume in a poetic triptych, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise.Trade Review“Grounded in oríkì-like references to Sylvia Wynter’s oeuvre, Dub simultaneously contracts and expands to create a new form of proprioception, which allows us as a species, phantomed by the corrosive and lacerating actions of history, to locate ourselves in relation to other species, as well as within the time-space continuum of the yet to be, the now and the ‘past.’ Part prayer, oration, exhortation, commentary and story, Dub amplifies ancestral voices to become mythopoesis in the making.” -- M. NourbeSe Philip, author of * Zong! *“Offering a sweeping, thoughtful, and exquisite meditation on Sylvia Wynter's work, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's poetic engagement represents a new and unique way of encountering and paying homage to Black feminist theory and Black feminist theorists. A beautiful and graceful text, Dub will inspire readers to return to and to rethink Wynter's work and her place within African Diaspora studies, Caribbean studies, and Black feminist studies.” -- Lisa B. Thompson, author of * Single Black Female *"Breath is an important theme in Dub. As is gratitude in the face of environmental decline. Because our ancestors navigated so intimately through change, Gumbs sets out to prove, so can we. . . . [An] exquisitely rendered love letter. . . ." -- Ashia Ajani * Sierra *"People throw around terms like Genius and Magic frequently but if you open this book, flip to any passage, and don’t feel moved from your soul then I will assume that you don’t have one. 5 Stars aren't enough for this sacred text but it's all we got so . . . ." -- Adrien Julious * Authentically Adrien blog *"I am so grateful that Alexis Pauline Gumbs listens to Black women writers and scholars the way that she does. . . . Dub is a book of our now. As tends to be the case with the books that Gumbs summons, the timing of Dub is prescient. With our breathless global attention set to registering the various way a virus connects all life forms, I cannot think of a better time for a book that tarries with and makes ceremony with Sylvia Wynter." -- Tiffany Lethabo King * Antipode *"[G]round-breaking. . . . Gumbs’s trilogy embraces the lyric beauty in the acts of naming, remembering, and finding one’s way back to the source. . . . Reading Gumbs’s books feels like reading an archive that will someday, who knows maybe even someday soon, usher in an era of radical transformation." -- Kathryn Nuernberger * West Branch *“Both a gathering and a recovery, this last pivotal volume in a trilogy commits to a new poetics. . . . Dub wakes us concussively. Both wrenching and playful, it offers instructions (two sets of them), warnings, and its central bid to listen to the undrowned.” -- Susan McCabe * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsA Note ix Request 1 Commitment 3 Instructions 5 Opening 7 Whale Chorus 15 Remembering 21 Nunánuk 34 Boda 40 Anguilla 47 Another Set of Instructions 66 Red August 74 Relation 92 Prophet 94 And 110 Skin 114 Losing it All 120 It's Your Father 126 Edict 145 Edgegrove 153 Unlearning Herself 163 Birth Chorus 177 Conditions 194 Jamaica 199 Blood Chorus 202 Shop 214 Orchard 220 Cycle 227 Saving the Planet 231 Staying 239 Letting Go 246 Acknowledgments 253 Notes 261 Crate Dig 273
£76.50
Duke University Press Whats the Use
Book SynopsisContinuing the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word and following its historical, intellectual, and political significance, Sara Ahmed explores how use operates as an organizing concept, technology of control, and tool for diversity work.Trade Review“In this close reading of use, Sara Ahmed leads the reader from object to object at a pace that moves with the deliberateness of a philosopher and the grace of a literary scholar. With this and other books, Ahmed has established herself as one of the most important feminist thinkers in the world.” -- Rosemarie Garland-Thomson“With characteristic verve and force, Sara Ahmed explores the uses of use. More than a history of an idea and much more than a philosophical investigation of use and value, Ahmed’s book teaches us how to locate use, usefulness, used-upness, used objects, and useful and useless knowledge in relation to time, space, queerness, and more. Read this book; you need it, and more importantly, you will use it. It is useful and useless in equal proportion and compelling precisely because of its mixed-use value. Before you know it, you will get used to use and you will carry it with you always.” -- Jack Halberstam“How lucky we are that feminist killjoy Sara Ahmed takes us on her learned, witty, and insightful journey. With her evocative exasperation at the state of affairs with regard to the (im)possibilities of diversity work and complaint, she dismantles the sexist and racist structures of the modern university. Now as a courageous, independent scholar, Ahmed continues to shine her characteristic phenomenological lights on walls and doors and more. She is still here; she refused to get used to it!” -- Gloria Wekker"By crafting different routes, travelling lesser-known paths, and finding alternate ways of telling stories about use, Ahmed invites her readers to see the world from these non-normative subject positions and to rethink and reshape their own worldviews in the process." -- Sohel Sarkar * AC Review of Books *"A well-written, engaging text. Highly recommended. All readership levels." -- C. R. McCall * Choice *"Ahmed sought to write a text that intervenes in the everyday, that elevates a threadbare backpack to a place of unbound theoretical play. And she has done so. Although some readers may find themselves frustrated by Ahmed’s deflections of tangible directive, that seems to be precisely the point. Accessible and innovative, What’s the Use? will be of serious interest to activists, artists, and academics working at the intersections of queer and critical race studies." -- Caitlin Mackenzie * QED *“Ahmed follows an unexpected and fascinating pathway through the history of use, one that brings together scientific theories, institutional histories, and everyday life.... Ahmed’s explorations are animated by a spirit of reinvention that challenges both the conventions of philosophical practice and the taken-for-granted boundaries of feminist thought.” -- Eden Kinkaid * Feminist Formations *"What’s the Use? combines an intellectual history and a philosophical exploration of the concept of use with ethnographies and personal reflections on institutional diversity work. . . . Ahmed’s paradoxical undertaking reveals one must first subvert institutional diversity practices, in order to truly diversify an institution." -- Velina Manolova * Public Books *“What’s the Use? is a rigorous book with power.... Ahmed’s book wields theory in the right way.... I came away from What’s the Use? feeling equipped with new knowledge and ready to use it.” -- Minhae Shim Roth * Continuum *"Ahmed’s book is an interdisciplinary treasure for scholars that contributes to diverse strands of thought including women’s studies, decolonial studies, disability studies, and queer studies. Furthermore, the 'queer and idiosyncratic' method of the book (19) offers rich resources for 'troublemakers,' student organizers, feminist collectives, and human rights advocates." -- Pallavi Gupta * International Feminist Journal of Politics *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Introduction. A Useful Archive 1 1. Using Things 21 2. The Biology of Use and Disuse 68 3. Use as Technique 103 4. Use and the University 141 Conclusion. Queer Use 197 Notes 231 References 257 Index 271
£72.25
Duke University Press Honeypot
Book SynopsisIn this engaging and moving book, E. Patrick Johnson combines magical realism, poetry, and performative writing to bear witness to the real-life stories of black southern queer women in ways that reveal the complexity of identity and the challenges these women face.Trade Review“In this critically singular work E. Patrick Johnson excavates heretofore unexplored stories of contemporary southern black women whose narratives of loving other women subvert their erasure in queer histories of LGBTQ communities. Gesturing toward black storytelling traditions within which both myth and fact shape the story, Johnson values and gives value to black women’s understandings of themselves and the transformative power of self-initiated freedoms. I've never read an oral history as powerful as Honeypot.” -- Alexis De Veaux, author of * Yabo *“E. Patrick Johnson delivers again. We make a corner turn from his book of delicious tea leaves and find ourselves submerged in the long-legged pages of sweet woman truth. The stories are of southern women loving themselves and other women too. Here are memories and moments shaping a new tradition of resilience and rosewater.” -- Nikky Finney, author of * Head Off & Split *“Like Virgil guiding Dante, cigarette-smoking Miss B., a trickster and shape-shifter, guides E. Patrick Johnson (Dr. EPJ) through the magical ‘beehive’ of ‘Hymen’ (indeed), where most of the action of this time-traveling oral epic unfolds. Miss B.—a cross between Pearl Bailey and Nipsey Russell—admonishes Dr. EPJ and the reader to ‘pull your shit tight or this is going to be a very long journey.’ There is so much telling in this book and so much pride.” -- Cheryl Clarke, author of * Living as a Lesbian *“E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot simmers with delight and insight as black lesbian women share their stories of triumph and horror. Never before have I encountered space ruled by these voices, and never before have they been invited to bare it all unashamedly. It's about time!” -- Daniel Black, author of * Perfect Peace *"At times devastating and always gripping, Honeypot is an innovative and educational glimpse into the lives of black Southern LGBTQ+ women." -- Eileen Gonzalez * Foreword Reviews *“[T]his text moves at its own pace, forces the reader to follow rather than lead, and slows things down a bit.... Slowing down, reflecting, collecting stories, sharing those stories fresh from lips that are often sealed—by choice, habit, or oppression—is, perhaps, just the salve we need in this moment.” -- Jade C. Huell * Text and Performance Quarterly *“Johnson leaves the women of his book to describe their intimate worlds without interruption or bringing attention to himself.... His work offers queer of color scholars a bridge for taking on projects that are as experimental as they are exploratory into Black queer practices across the diaspora.” -- Paul J. Edwards * The Black Scholar *“This book . . . is both true and fantastic, wary and indulgent, self-conscious and daring. . . . Honeypot delivers more than it said it would, and it holds the capacity to reduce the threat felt by those who might fear women who love women.” -- Katrina Spencer * Resources for Gender and Women's Studies *Table of ContentsForeword / Alexis Pauline Gumbs ix Preface. You Catch More Bees with Honey Than with Vinegar xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction. The Adventures of Miss B. and Me 1 1. The Hive 5 2. Blessed Bee 55 3. Honeybee Blues 69 4. Honey Love 112 5. Beebop and Beeswax 132 6. All Hail the Queen (Bee) 153 Epilogue. Flight 220 Appendix. List of Honeybees 223 Notes 227 Index 229
£72.25
Duke University Press Fencing in Democracy
Book SynopsisBorder walls permeate our world, with more than thirty nation-states constructing them. Anthropologists Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga argue that border wall construction manifests transformations in citizenship practices that are aimed not only at keeping migrants out but also at enmeshing citizens into a wider politics of exclusion. For a decade, the authors studied the U.S.-Mexico border wall constructed by the Department of Homeland Security and observed the political protests and legal challenges that residents mounted in opposition to the wall. In Fencing in Democracy Dorsey and Díaz-Barriga take us to those border communities most affected by the wall and often ignored in national discussions about border security to highlight how the state diminishes citizens'' rights. That dynamic speaks to the citizenship experiences of border residents that is indicative of how walls imprison the populations they are built to protect. Dorsey and Díaz-BTrade Review“Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret E. Dorsey's argument that the role of the state in fomenting violence remains unrecognized and depoliticized is powerful and utterly convincing. With its superior scholarship and compelling ethnographic material, Fencing in Democracy will garner interest from scholars and the public alike.” -- Patricia Zavella, author of * I’m Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty *“Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret E. Dorsey deliver a groundbreaking exposé of the distorted logics, policies, and politics that underpin the construction of border walls. Focusing on the US-Mexico border wall, Fencing in Democracy is a deeply thoughtful and thoroughly researched investigation that reveals the backstories behind ever-expanding processes of securitization and militarization, and the death and destruction that result. Not for the fainthearted, this book is for concerned citizens of the world looking to comprehend what the popular media and powerful politicians distort and a wake-up call about what gets destroyed in the name of safety.” -- Alisse Waterston, author of * My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century *“This work is provocative.... Given the global rise of authoritarian rule coupled with the imposition of walls of exclusion, Fencing in Democracy will be of interest globally to general publics and students across the social sciences.” -- Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez * Journal of Anthropological Research *“[Fencing in Democracy] is an extremely valuable study of the local dynamics and resistance to the federal and state multilayered border enforcement machine and propaganda.” -- Timothy Dunn * Anthropos *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. The Politics of Bisection: A Visual Ethnography of Rebordering and Rajando 15 2. Not Walls, Bridges: Rituals of Necrocitizenship 49 3. Necrocitizenship Enacted: Raping White Women and Consolidating the State of Exception 79 4. Bleeding like the State: The Open Veins of Latin America 108 5. Necrocitizenship Kills 118 Conclusion 135 Epilogue 141 Notes 145 References 159 Index 171
£70.55
Duke University Press Unreconciled
Book SynopsisAndrea Smith examines the racial reconciliation movement in Evangelical Christianity through a critical ethnic studies lens, evaluating the varying degrees to which Evangelical communities that were founded on white supremacy have attempted to address racism and become more inclusive.Trade Review“For women of color, in particular, who have been laboring to disrupt the racially and sexually oppressive policies and practices of evangelical organizations, Andrea Smith communicates ‘I see you.’ The way that she does this gives credence to the Sisyphean burden undertaken by women of color who are employing progressive intersectional frameworks in evangelical spaces. Smith manages to impart a sense of hope, demonstrating how the very presence of people of color within evangelical spaces can serve to destabilize white heterosexist patriarchal power.” -- Chanequa Walker-Barnes, author of * I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation *“Offering the first cultural history of the evangelical racial justice movement that is subversively and gradually changing the face of politics in the United States, Andrea Smith argues that whiteness is the heart of the problem of American evangelicalism. Upon reading Unreconciled, scholars of religion and politics will need to rethink what they mean by evangelicals, racial reconciliation, and progressive politics. This brilliant book is a must-read for all thoughtful Americans.” -- Peter Goodwin Heltzel, author of * Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics *"Unreconciled is an informative read for scholars of contemporary religion, critical ethnic studies, and evangelical theology alike. In light of the global Black Lives Matter movements of 2020 and the rising interest in conversations on race and religion, the book’s in-depth coverage of a wide variety of racial injustice and racial reconciliation ideologies and movements within contemporary Christian evangelicalism is both urgent and informative." -- Flora X. Tang * Religion and Gender *"Smith’s book pries both critical ethnic studies and Christian evangelicalism from their presumed positions within the academy and the hands of white conservatives, respectively. In doing so, Smith presents valuable theoretical critique where the academy does not usually look for it and further demonstrates the usefulness of a critical ethnic studies framework outside the academy and across political and religious contexts." -- Allie Arend * Religious Studies Review *
£23.99
Duke University Press Honeypot Black Southern Women Who Love Women
Book SynopsisIn this engaging and moving book, E. Patrick Johnson combines magical realism, poetry, and performative writing to bear witness to the real-life stories of black southern queer women in ways that reveal the complexity of identity and the challenges these women face.Trade Review“In this critically singular work E. Patrick Johnson excavates heretofore unexplored stories of contemporary southern black women whose narratives of loving other women subvert their erasure in queer histories of LGBTQ communities. Gesturing toward black storytelling traditions within which both myth and fact shape the story, Johnson values and gives value to black women’s understandings of themselves and the transformative power of self-initiated freedoms. I've never read an oral history as powerful as Honeypot.” -- Alexis De Veaux, author of * Yabo *“E. Patrick Johnson delivers again. We make a corner turn from his book of delicious tea leaves and find ourselves submerged in the long-legged pages of sweet woman truth. The stories are of southern women loving themselves and other women too. Here are memories and moments shaping a new tradition of resilience and rosewater.” -- Nikky Finney, author of * Head Off & Split *“Like Virgil guiding Dante, cigarette-smoking Miss B., a trickster and shape-shifter, guides E. Patrick Johnson (Dr. EPJ) through the magical ‘beehive’ of ‘Hymen’ (indeed), where most of the action of this time-traveling oral epic unfolds. Miss B.—a cross between Pearl Bailey and Nipsey Russell—admonishes Dr. EPJ and the reader to ‘pull your shit tight or this is going to be a very long journey.’ There is so much telling in this book and so much pride.” -- Cheryl Clarke, author of * Living as a Lesbian *“E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot simmers with delight and insight as black lesbian women share their stories of triumph and horror. Never before have I encountered space ruled by these voices, and never before have they been invited to bare it all unashamedly. It's about time!” -- Daniel Black, author of * Perfect Peace *"At times devastating and always gripping, Honeypot is an innovative and educational glimpse into the lives of black Southern LGBTQ+ women." -- Eileen Gonzalez * Foreword Reviews *“[T]his text moves at its own pace, forces the reader to follow rather than lead, and slows things down a bit.... Slowing down, reflecting, collecting stories, sharing those stories fresh from lips that are often sealed—by choice, habit, or oppression—is, perhaps, just the salve we need in this moment.” -- Jade C. Huell * Text and Performance Quarterly *“Johnson leaves the women of his book to describe their intimate worlds without interruption or bringing attention to himself.... His work offers queer of color scholars a bridge for taking on projects that are as experimental as they are exploratory into Black queer practices across the diaspora.” -- Paul J. Edwards * The Black Scholar *“This book . . . is both true and fantastic, wary and indulgent, self-conscious and daring. . . . Honeypot delivers more than it said it would, and it holds the capacity to reduce the threat felt by those who might fear women who love women.” -- Katrina Spencer * Resources for Gender and Women's Studies *Table of ContentsForeword / Alexis Pauline Gumbs ix Preface. You Catch More Bees with Honey Than with Vinegar xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction. The Adventures of Miss B. and Me 1 1. The Hive 5 2. Blessed Bee 55 3. Honeybee Blues 69 4. Honey Love 112 5. Beebop and Beeswax 132 6. All Hail the Queen (Bee) 153 Epilogue. Flight 220 Appendix. List of Honeybees 223 Notes 227 Index 229
£18.89
Duke University Press Are You Entertained
Book SynopsisIn this collection of essays, interviews, visual art, and artist statements on topics ranging from music and dance to Black Twitter and the NBA's dress code, the contributors consider what culture and Blackness mean in the twenty-first century's digital consumer economy.Trade Review“Are You Entertained? is a thoughtfully constructed collection of scholarly work on blackness and subjectivity and their constant tensions with popular culture and mass media. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson do a superb job of weaving together these shards of insightful criticism and analysis into a tapestry of fascinating commentary by some of the most dynamic voices in the field.” -- John Jennings, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside"The book is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary field of African American studies as well as to literature and sociology and to the overall study of performance, culture, media, and Blackness. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals." -- T. N. Allen * Choice *“Are you Entertained? is an immensely generative model and guide for doing sharp and powerful work in Black studies. It makes a case for why Black cultural studies matter by pinpointing the liberatory potential of Black popular culture in and for our current lives.” -- Elliott H. Powell * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 I. Performing Blackness 1. "Mutts Like Me": Mixed-Race Jokes and Post-Racial Rejection in the Obama Era / Ralina L. Joseph 29 2. Black Radio: Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, and Janelle Monáe / Emily J. Lordi 44 3. Camping and Vamping across Borders: Locating Cabaret Singers in the Black Cultural Spectrum / Vincent Stephens 58 4. The Art of Black Popular Culture / H. Ike Okafor-Newsum 77 5. Interview / Lisa B. Thompson 91 II. Politicizing Blackness 6. Refashioning Political Cartoons: Comics of Jackie Ormes 1938–1958 / Kelly Jo Fulkerson-Dikuua 101 7. Queer Kinship and Worldmaking in Black Queer Web Series: Drama Queenz and No Shade / Eric Darnell Pritchard 118 8. Styling and Profiling: Ballers, Blackness, and the Sartorial Politics of the NBA / David J. Leonard 134 9. Interview / Tracy Sharpley-Whiting 153 III. Owning Blackness 10. The Subaltern Is Signifyin(g): Black Twitter as a Site of Resistance / Sheneese Thompson 161 11. Authentic Black Cool?: Branding and Trademarks in Contemporary African American Culture / Richard Schur 175 12. Black Culture without Black People: Hip-Hop Dance beyond Appropriation Discourse / Imani Kai Johnson 191 13. At the Corner of Chaos and Divine: Black Ritual Theater, Performance, and Politics / Nina Angela Mercer 207 14. Interview / Mark Anthony Neal 229 IV. Loving Blackness 15. The Booty Don't Lie: Pleasure, Agency, and Resistance in Black Popular Dance / Takiyah Nur Amin 237 16. He Said Nothing: Sonic Space and the Production of Quietude in Barry Jenkins's Moonlight / Simone C. Drake 252 17. Black Women Readers and the Uses of Urban Fiction / Kinohi Nishikawa 268 18. Interview / Patricia Hill Collins 288 Contributors 301 Index 307
£25.19
Duke University Press Fencing in Democracy
Book SynopsisBorder walls permeate our world, with more than thirty nation-states constructing them. Anthropologists Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga argue that border wall construction manifests transformations in citizenship practices that are aimed not only at keeping migrants out but also at enmeshing citizens into a wider politics of exclusion. For a decade, the authors studied the U.S.-Mexico border wall constructed by the Department of Homeland Security and observed the political protests and legal challenges that residents mounted in opposition to the wall. In Fencing in Democracy Dorsey and Díaz-Barriga take us to those border communities most affected by the wall and often ignored in national discussions about border security to highlight how the state diminishes citizens'' rights. That dynamic speaks to the citizenship experiences of border residents that is indicative of how walls imprison the populations they are built to protect. Dorsey and Díaz-BTrade Review“Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret E. Dorsey's argument that the role of the state in fomenting violence remains unrecognized and depoliticized is powerful and utterly convincing. With its superior scholarship and compelling ethnographic material, Fencing in Democracy will garner interest from scholars and the public alike.” -- Patricia Zavella, author of * I’m Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty *“Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret E. Dorsey deliver a groundbreaking exposé of the distorted logics, policies, and politics that underpin the construction of border walls. Focusing on the US-Mexico border wall, Fencing in Democracy is a deeply thoughtful and thoroughly researched investigation that reveals the backstories behind ever-expanding processes of securitization and militarization, and the death and destruction that result. Not for the fainthearted, this book is for concerned citizens of the world looking to comprehend what the popular media and powerful politicians distort and a wake-up call about what gets destroyed in the name of safety.” -- Alisse Waterston, author of * My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century *“This work is provocative.... Given the global rise of authoritarian rule coupled with the imposition of walls of exclusion, Fencing in Democracy will be of interest globally to general publics and students across the social sciences.” -- Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez * Journal of Anthropological Research *“[Fencing in Democracy] is an extremely valuable study of the local dynamics and resistance to the federal and state multilayered border enforcement machine and propaganda.” -- Timothy Dunn * Anthropos *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. The Politics of Bisection: A Visual Ethnography of Rebordering and Rajando 15 2. Not Walls, Bridges: Rituals of Necrocitizenship 49 3. Necrocitizenship Enacted: Raping White Women and Consolidating the State of Exception 79 4. Bleeding like the State: The Open Veins of Latin America 108 5. Necrocitizenship Kills 118 Conclusion 135 Epilogue 141 Notes 145 References 159 Index 171
£18.99
Duke University Press The Lonely Letters
Book SynopsisThe Lonely Letters is an epistolary blackqueer critique of the normative world in which Ashon T. Crawley meditates on the interrelation of blackqueer life, sounds of the black church, theology, mysticism, and the potential for platonic and erotic connection in a world that conspires against blackqueer life.Trade Review“Ashon T. Crawley pushes his readers to contemplate the intimacy of living the life of the mind as a spiritual, enfleshed, and intellectual matter. Rejecting the intellect/emotion division through a rendering of intimacy and desire, The Lonely Letters stands as the achievement of aspirations long discussed but largely elusive in both feminist and queer criticism. A stunning and innovative work.” -- Imani Perry, author of * Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation *“The Lonely Letters is a joyful mourning, a celebratory treatise, a rigorous performance, and an analysis of race and philosophy, aesthetics and blackness, and much more. I could not put it down and at points found myself laughing and in tears, all the while learning. Truly pathbreaking, it is an astounding, innovative, and deeply affecting work.” -- Nicole R. Fleetwood, author of * On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination *"The Lonely Letters, from A to Moth, from Crawley to us, is ultimately an illumination of a way to Baby Suggs’ clearing in Beloved, the site of blackqueer care, the site of grace—an invitation to 'refuse the prison of "I" and choose the open spaces of "we.”'" -- Yumi Pak * American Studies *"I admire Crawley’s writing about queerness and sociality profoundly. I revere his embrace of the epistolary, of the way he makes academic writing feel pulsing and alive, enacted with breath and desire and shouting and song. . . . [E]ach letter is a flexing, embodied interweaving of queer theory, Black studies, music, eros, intellect, art, friendship, religion, body, breath. It is critical and creative all at once." -- Ayden Leroux * Full Stop *"Crawley opens the world of critical theory (a discipline not known best for being welcoming to all minds and approaches) to those readers who might not have a background in it." -- Leora Fridman * Full Stop *“The Lonely Letters, in thinking through and with Black life, challenges the reader to (re)imagine religion, mysticism, epistemology, performance, and the possibility of life together otherwise.... [It] bears the potential to push religious studies scholarship beyond what was presumed possible.” -- Christopher Hunt * Journal of Africana Religions *“The Lonely Letters arrives as a wonderful surprise: it invites us to sit with vulnerability, and to ask what vulnerability might offer our world-imagining practices.” -- Keguro Macharia * GLQ *“You can’t review [The Lonely Letters]. Because you haven’t just read a book. You’ve had an encounter. A beautiful, blackqueer, encounter.” -- Biko Gray * Reading Religion *
£72.25
Duke University Press Race and Performance after Repetition
Book SynopsisExamining theater, performance art, music, sports, dance, and photography, the contributors to Race and Performance after Repetition explore how theater and performance studies account for the complex relationship between race and time.Trade Review“Offering a groundbreaking take on one of the most central premises of performance studies, this innovative volume advances theoretical and interpretive articulations of time that expand upon and challenge long-held assumptions about performance as repetition. It significantly expands performance theory and promises to animate conversations about performance, race, and time going forward. This collection is truly a breath of fresh air.” -- Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, coeditor of * Blacktino Queer Performance *“‘What time is it?!’ Race and Performance after Repetition offers a pathbreaking and long overdue intervention in performance studies by posing this sly and urgent question from a multiplicity of critical vantage points. This brilliant and inspired collection of essays unsettles the very foundations of the field by tracing, interrogating, and ultimately questioning the dominant logic of repetition as a foundational theoretical axiom in performance studies scholarship by way of calling attention to the difference that race makes. As this anthology demonstrates, the material historical conditions of race demand a wider, deeper, and more robust critical lexicon that moves beyond the grammar of temporal repetition. It is a volume that heralds new times in the field.” -- Daphne A. Brooks, author of * Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 *“Race and Performance After Repetition is worth reading from cover to cover, both for the engaging and diverse methodologies on offer and for its overarching interest in what scholars of performance studies miss if they adhere too closely to the conventions of the field.” -- Christina Knight * American Literary History *“The new collection Race and Performance After Repetition moves several fields forward, among them theatre, dance, and performance studies, Black studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies. That it does so is a testament to the richness and interdisciplinarity of the animating impulse behind the collection, the thought of José Esteban Muñoz.” -- Ariel Nereson * Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism *“Colbert, Jones, and Vogel have assembled a truly excellent collection of new work . . . of some of the most exciting performance theorists working in the field today. . . . The editors and contributors alike have collectively produced something magnificent.” -- Takeo Rivera * Modern Drama *“As a collection [Race and Performance after Repetition] pushes on how repetition takes shape; it offers enlightening albeit disparate interventions in thinking about how race, time and performance produce meaning as an ensemble. . . . I finished the book and wanted to start it again.” -- Sean Metzger * Performance Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Tidying Up after Repetition / Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas A. Jones Jr., and Shane Vogel 1 Part I. Toggling Time: Metatheaters of Race 1. So Far Down You Can't See the Light: Afro-Fabulation in Branden Jacob-Jenkins's An Octoroon / Tavia Nyong'o 29 2. The Performance and Politics of Concurrent Temporalities in George C. Wolfe's Shuffle Along / Catherine M. Young 46 3. A Sonic Treatise of Futurity: Universes' Party People / Patricia Herrera 71 Part II. Choreo-Chronographies 4. Joe Louis's Utopic Glitch / Tina Post 103 5. Sorrow's Swing / Jasmine Johnson 127 6. Parabolic Moves: Time, Narrative, and Difference in New Circus / Katherine Zien 142 7. Choreographing Time Travel: Rethinking Ritual through Korean Diasporic Performance / Elizabeth W. Son 173 Part III. Temporal (Im)mobilities: Dwelling Out of Time 8. Carceral Space-Times and The House That Herman Built / Nicholas Fesette 199 9. Performance Interventions: Natality and Carceral Feminism in Contemporary India / Jisha Menon 220 10. Whitnessing Queer Flights: Josué Azor's Lougawou Images and Antihomosexual Unrest in Haiti / Mario Lamothe 242 11. The Body Is Never Given, nor Do We Actually See It / Joshua Chambers-Letson 270 Bibliography 293 Contributors 317 Index 321
£98.60
Duke University Press Infamous Bodies
Book SynopsisSamantha Pinto explores how histories of and the ongoing fame of Phillis Wheatley, Sally Hemings, Sarah Baartman, Mary Seacole, and Sarah Forbes Bonetta generate new ways of imagining black feminist futures.Trade Review“Infamous Bodies is required reading for scholars of black feminist theory. This ambitious, provocative book interrogates female celebrity as a crucial genre through which black women come into political view. Samantha Pinto's careful and thoughtful wrestling with black women celebrities who have become—or perhaps always were—‘difficult’ in and for black feminist studies requires that scholars probe the very meaning of the ‘political’ for black feminist thought. Black feminist theory will be both challenged and transformed by Pinto's careful and counterintuitive readings of black women's representation and by Pinto’s call for the necessary centrality of vulnerability to our scholarly and political work.” -- Jennifer C. Nash, author of * Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality *“With theoretical innovation and a commitment to bringing to light forgotten cultural moments, Samantha Pinto considers notorious figures of black female historical celebrity for what they can tell us about the limits of liberal humanist conceptions of freedom, agency, and consent. Fueled by a powerful sense of urgency, Pinto’s rich and valuable contribution pushes black studies and feminist and queer studies of representation and history to new places while prompting readers to think about how celebrity culture continues to treat black women with the broadest strokes.” -- Francesca T. Royster, author of * Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era *"[A] must-have counterintuitive, historical analysis. . . . The book is well written . . . and would be ideal for the following departments: sociology, women's studies, and African American studies. The book would pair well with the following courses: women authority and power, women's right and status; and feminism." -- Shauntey James * Ethnic and Racial Studies *This excellent text is a must read for those studying cultural and Black feminist representations to understand how those that proliferated in the past inform contemporary debates related to '[B]lack women’s sexual, embodied visibility as always politically suspect.'" -- C. B. Regester * Choice *"Pinto’s work is skilfully crafted. . . . With a theoretical focus of Black feminism, structured through a framework of human rights discourse, and with a call to reframe Black feminist thought and historiography, Pinto’s work offers scholars new possibilities for asking different questions of our material and the way in which we see, read and write about them." -- Rebecca J. Fraser * European Journal of American Culture *"Infamous Bodies feels acutely timely. Dense with citation and conceptual triangulation, Pinto’s is an up-to-date intervention rooted in the history of the field. There are many potential audiences for this text—within literary studies, media studies, sexuality studies, and political theory—but any feminist scholar keeping abreast of contemporary debates will find something of interest here." -- Deborah Thurman * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *"Infamous Bodies is a generative contribution to the field of Black feminist theory, particularly for scholars interested in the early intersections of contracts, labor, and international human rights. This is also an insightful text for practitioners of art criticism and performance theory." -- Margarita Lila Rosa * The Black Scholar *"Pinto offers new radical political futures for black feminist studies. . . . She adds to existing critical human rights scholarship on vulnerability with a novel reconfiguration of what agency and freedom look like." -- Marietta Kosma * US Studies Online *"Pinto’s is an innovative study which expands upon the contemporary discourses central to black feminist scholarship and will likely become an essential read in its field." -- Laura Skinner * Journal of Gender Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Infamous Bodies, Corrective Histories 1 1. Fantasies of Freedom: Phillis Wheatley and the "Deathless Fame" of Black Feminist Thought 31 2. The Romance of Consent: Sally Hemings, Black Women's Sexuality, and the Fundamental Vulnerability of Rights 65 3. Venus at Work: The Contracted Body and Fictions of Sarah Baartman 105 4. Civic Desire: Mary Seacole's Adventures in Black Citizenship 139 5. #DevelopmentGoals: Sovereignty, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, and the Production of the Black Feminist Political Subject 173 Conclusion. Black Feminist Celebrity and the Political Life of Vulnerability 203 Notes 207 References 221 Index 243
£72.25
Duke University Press Otherwise Worlds
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Otherwise Worlds investigate the complex relationships between settler colonialism and anti-Blackness to explore the political possibilities that emerge from such inquiries. Pointing out that presumptions of solidarity, antagonism, or incommensurability between Black and Native communities are insufficient to understand the relationships between the groups, the volume''s scholars, artists, and activists look to articulate new modes of living and organizing in the service of creating new futures. Among other topics, they examine the ontological status of Blackness and Indigeneity, possible forms of relationality between Black and Native communities, perspectives on Black and Indigenous sociality, and freeing the flesh from the constraints of violence and settler colonialism. Throughout the volume''s essays, art, and interviews, the contributors carefully attend to alternative kinds of relationships between Black and Native communities that can lead toward libeTrade Review“Ambitious, theoretically sophisticated, and timely, Otherwise Worlds stages a much-needed conversation between Black studies and Native studies as they interface with critical race theory and gender and queer theory while significantly advancing the discourses around racialized being, anti-blackness, Indigeneity, and settler colonialism.” -- Alexander G. Weheliye, author of * Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human *“Presenting new analyses and theorizations of the intersections and tensions between Black studies and Native studies, Otherwise Worlds shows how these fields can speak and think with each other. It has the potential to serve as a model of decolonial love in the academy and in our communities.” -- Michelle Jacob, author of * Indian Pilgrims: Indigenous Journeys of Activism and Healing with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha *"There is so much to admire about this book. I am making my way through each section slowly. Artists, activists and scholars frame the questions, complexities and possibilities an 'otherwise' orientation might open up, if we find better and better ways of ‘thinking of, caring for and talking to one another’ about the ongoing effects of genocide, colonialism, enslavement and anti-Blackness." -- Julia Guez * Houston Chronicle *“Otherwise Worlds offers a thought-provoking guide towards re-imagining the presence, resurgence and future of Black and Indigenous life…. Otherwise Worlds is an outstanding piece of academic work and a remarkable guide to approaching alternative worlds beyond racism, ecological destruction and racial capitalism.” -- Laura Mariana Reyes * Cultural Studies *“This collection is truly a conversation between disciplines and paves the way for new ways of relating to one another. Otherwise Worlds is a compelling collection that does what it sets out to do.” -- Alina Scott * E3W Review of Books *“Otherwise Worlds is a call to think beyond ourselves and curate an authentic relation to the scholarship, the land, and mainly the people. A major takeaway from each interview, essay, and artwork in this volume is the range of interdisciplinarity needed to capture the complexity of this discourse of sovereignty and liberation across the diaspora.” -- Daisy E. Guzman Nunez * NACLA Report on the Americas *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Beyond Incommensurability: Toward an Otherwise Stance on Black and Indigenous Relationality / Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, and Andrea Smith 1 Part I. Boundless Bodies 1. Stayed | Freedom | Hallelujah / Ashon Crawley 27 2. Reading the Dead: A Feminist Black Critique of Global Capital / Denise Ferreira da Silva 38 3. Staying Ready for Black Study / Frank B. Wilderson III and Tiffany Lethabo King 52 Part II. Boundless Ontologies 4. New World Grammars: The "Unthought" Black Discourses of Conquest / Tiffany Lethabo King 77 5. The Vel of Slavery: Tracking the Figure of the Unsovereign / Jared Sexton 94 6. Sovereignty as Deferred Genocide / Andrea Smith 118 7. Murder and Metaphysics: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Tony's Story" and Audre Lorde's "Power" / Chad Benito Infante 133 8. Black Malpractice (or, the Fugitive Sacred) / J. Kameron Carter 158 Part III. Boundless Socialities 9. Possessions of Whiteness: Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness in the Pacific / Maile Arvin 213 10. "What's Past Is Prologue": Black Native Refusal and the Colonial Archive / Sandra Harvey 218 11. Indian Country's Apartheid / Cedric Sunray 236 12. "Ugh! Maskoke People and Our Pervasive Anti-Black Racism . . . Let the Language Teach Us!" / Marcus Briggs-Cloud 13. Mississippian Black Metal Grl on a Friday Night with Artist's Statement / Hotvlkuce Harjo 291 Part IV. Boundless Kinship 14. The Countdown Remix: Why Two Native Feminists Ride with Queen Bey / Jenelle Navarro and Kimberly Robertson 15. Slay Serigraph with Artist's Statement / Kimberly Robertson 320 16. Mass Incarceration since 1492 / Jenell Navarro and Kimberly Robertson 322 17. "Liberation," Cover of Queer Indigenous Girl, Volume 4, and "Roots," Cover of Black Indigenous Boy, Volume 2 / Se'mana Thompson 330 18. Visual Cultures of Indigenous Futurism / Lindsay Nixon 332 19. Diaspora, Transnationalism, and the Decolonial Project / Rinaldo Walcott 343 20. Building Maroon Intellectual Communities / Chris Finley 362 About the Authors 371 Index
£85.50
Duke University Press A Peoples History of Detroit
Book SynopsisMark Jay and Philip Conklin use a Marxist framework to tell a sweeping story of Detroit from 1913 to the present, outlining the complex socio-political dynamics underlying major events in Detroit's past, from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions to deindustrialization and the city's recent bankruptcy.Trade Review“A People's History of Detroit finally allows us to look beyond the mythology of the Motor City, the ruin porn, and the boosterism, and to grasp the dialectic of redevelopment and dispossession, accumulation and abandonment, that has defined its history for a century. Mark Jay and Philip Conklin's book is a model of militant research, recovering the city's traditions of resistance and revealing the staggering human cost behind the hype about the ‘New Detroit.’” -- Alberto Toscano, Reader in Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London“In this intellectually stimulating, bold, and panoramic treatment of Detroit, Mark Jay and Philip Conklin render in fine detail the processes that produce both tremendous wealth and misery. Their work is a powerful antidote to recurrent narratives of market triumphalism, from Ford's five-dollar day to the postwar promises of the affluent society and the casino capitalism touted during the Archer, Kilpatrick, and Bing years. This book is a much-needed account of Detroit's evolution.” -- Cedric Johnson, author of * Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics *"Jay and Conklin’s narrative is at its most gripping during their account of the revolutionary 1960s and its aftermath. In addition to providing a detailed blow by blow account of Detroit’s 1967 uprising, they also argue – in contrast to most left-liberal narratives of the Great Rebellion – that arson and looting should not be viewed as chaotic side effects in contrast to morally justified political unrest, but as part of a broader direct confrontations against the institutions of private property and the state. . . . . These interrogations of memory and history make Detroit’s past feel like anything but past; as a result the city’s radical history blends with today’s global present." -- Andrew Newman * Antipode *"Jay and Conklin work backward before working forward. The authors first offer a people’s history of Detroit’s present, subverting chronology to read the resurgence narrative of Detroit against the grain and reveal the erasure of Black Detroit via the myth of Detroit’s 'Golden Age' in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. This allows them, and therefore us, to understand the systemic problems facing contemporary Detroit first, and then uncover their prehistory second, instead of the other way around." -- Hannah Zeavin * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Equal parts an urban history of a single city and a sweeping theory of capitalism. . . . Through a detailed exposition of one city’s past, A People’s History of Detroit imagines what a people’s future could look like in Detroit—and in other cities." -- David Helps * Public Books *"Recommended. General readers through faculty." -- Y. Kiuchi * Choice *“It is a testament to the clarity and scope of Mark Jay and Philip Conklin’s vision that A People’s History of Detroit—which went to press prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the onset of the most severe capitalist crisis since the 1930s, and the eruption of an unprecedented nationwide uprising (with global reverberations) against police brutality—is replete with insights for those trying to make sense of these deeply uncertain and troubling times.” -- David B. Feldman * Monthly Review *"If Mark Jay and Philip Conklin’s A People’s History of Detroit does not explicitly anticipate the current coronavirus crisis, it certainly explains the contours of its intense and rapid impact." -- Roberta Mock * Times Higher Education *“A timely volume that deserves a wide readership.” -- John Newsinger * International Socialism *“A People’s History of Detroit is that rare book that is both richly detailed and compelling written. . . . The significance of this book, however, is not in the details, but rather in the transferability of the critical interventions they are making in relationship to capitalism, creative destruction, and mythology.” -- Ashley Howard * Journal of American Ethnic History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction. Marx in Detroit 1 1. A Tale of One City, c. 1913–2018 17 2. Fordism and the So-Called Golden Years, c. 1913–1960 75 3. The Conditions of the Great Rebellion, c. 1960–1967 129 4. Revolutionaries and Counterrevolutionaries, c. 1967–1973 155 5. Post-Fordism and Mass Incarceration, c. 1974–2013 195 Conclusion. Competing Visions for Detroit's New Era 221 Notes 231 Bibliography 285 Index 299
£72.25
Duke University Press Tehrangeles Dreaming
Book SynopsisFarzaneh Hemmasi draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles and musical and textual analysis to examine how the pop music, music videos, and television made by Iranian expatriates express modes of Iranianness not possible in Iran.Trade Review“In this important book Farzaneh Hemmasi offers a novel reading of Iranian exilic pop music, raising insightful conceptual questions about the notion and significance of pop culture and diasporic imagination. By taking pop music seriously, she opens up a space for conversations about transnational networks of artistic production, the construction of nationhood and nationalism, and the politics of identity.” -- Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, author of * Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment *“Tehrangeles Dreaming deftly analyzes what circulates and translates around and across this most complex and refractive of diasporic spaces. It is a subtle book, a model of how to weave popular music and dance into a field still largely dominated by film and literature. And a real pleasure to read. That shesh-o-hasht groove can be felt on every page.” -- Martin Stokes, author of * The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music *“Farzaneh Hemmasi’s book is a deft and insightful analysis of Tehrangeles, viewed as a geography, a music scene, a pop industry, a transnational cultural production field, and a post-revolutionary diasporic cultural formation…. Conceptually rich, theoretically nuanced, with its lucid demonstrations of the mobilization of affect, Hemmasi’s Tehrangeles Dreaming makes a valuable contribution to a wide range of scholarship.” -- Mehdi Semati * Cultural Studies *“Tehrangeles Dreaming offers a compellingly argued and accessibly written ethnography of exile, cultural production, and the politics of identity in the Iranian context. It no doubt will be useful for those in ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural studies, and Middle East Studies...” -- Amy Malek * International Journal of Middle East Studies *“[Tehrangeles Dreaming] is an invaluable contribution to the study of Iranian popular culture.... Hemmasi is a truly powerful narrator in her ethnographic work and she provides a profoundly deep and pointed analysis....” -- Siavash Rokni * Lateral *“[Tehrangeles Dreaming] is particularly interesting when it discusses the impact of Tehrangeles pop on Iranians within, in political, social and moral terms.... The writing is engaging, filled with stories about fieldwork and encounters.” -- Laetitia Nanquette * Abstracta Iranica *“Tehrangeles Dreaming makes significant contributions to the scholarship on both American musical multiculturalism and the music of the Islamic world. . . . Farzaneh Hemmesi is to be commended for her clear and captivating first book.” -- Anna K. Rasmussen * Journal of Anthropological Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Capital of 6/8 38 2. Iranian Popular Music and History: Views from Tehrangeles 67 3. Expatriate Erotics, Homeland Moralities 98 4. Iran as a Singing Woman 122 5. A Nation in Recovery 153 Conclusion: Forty Years 186 Notes 201 References 223 Index 235
£98.60
Duke University Press Race and Performance after Repetition
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Race and Performance after Repetition explore how theater and performance studies account for the complex relationship between race and time. Pointing out that repetition has been the primary point of reference for understanding both the complex temporality of theater and the historical persistence of race, they identify and pursue critical alternatives to the conceptualization, organization, measurement, and politics of race in performance. The contributors examine theater, performance art, music, sports, dance, photography, and other forms of performance in topics that range from the movement of boxer Joe Louis to George C. Wolfe''s 2016 reimagining of the 1921 all-black musical comedy Shuffle Along to the relationship between dance, mourning, and black adolescence in Flying Lotus''s music video “Never Catch Me.” Proposing a spectrum of coexisting racial temporalities that are not tethered to repetition, this collection reconsiders centraTrade Review“Offering a groundbreaking take on one of the most central premises of performance studies, this innovative volume advances theoretical and interpretive articulations of time that expand upon and challenge long-held assumptions about performance as repetition. It significantly expands performance theory and promises to animate conversations about performance, race, and time going forward. This collection is truly a breath of fresh air.” -- Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, coeditor of * Blacktino Queer Performance *“‘What time is it?!’ Race and Performance after Repetition offers a pathbreaking and long overdue intervention in performance studies by posing this sly and urgent question from a multiplicity of critical vantage points. This brilliant and inspired collection of essays unsettles the very foundations of the field by tracing, interrogating, and ultimately questioning the dominant logic of repetition as a foundational theoretical axiom in performance studies scholarship by way of calling attention to the difference that race makes. As this anthology demonstrates, the material historical conditions of race demand a wider, deeper, and more robust critical lexicon that moves beyond the grammar of temporal repetition. It is a volume that heralds new times in the field.” -- Daphne A. Brooks, author of * Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 *“Race and Performance After Repetition is worth reading from cover to cover, both for the engaging and diverse methodologies on offer and for its overarching interest in what scholars of performance studies miss if they adhere too closely to the conventions of the field.” -- Christina Knight * American Literary History *“The new collection Race and Performance After Repetition moves several fields forward, among them theatre, dance, and performance studies, Black studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies. That it does so is a testament to the richness and interdisciplinarity of the animating impulse behind the collection, the thought of José Esteban Muñoz.” -- Ariel Nereson * Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism *“Colbert, Jones, and Vogel have assembled a truly excellent collection of new work . . . of some of the most exciting performance theorists working in the field today. . . . The editors and contributors alike have collectively produced something magnificent.” -- Takeo Rivera * Modern Drama *“As a collection [Race and Performance after Repetition] pushes on how repetition takes shape; it offers enlightening albeit disparate interventions in thinking about how race, time and performance produce meaning as an ensemble. . . . I finished the book and wanted to start it again.” -- Sean Metzger * Performance Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Tidying Up after Repetition / Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas A. Jones Jr., and Shane Vogel 1 Part I. Toggling Time: Metatheaters of Race 1. So Far Down You Can't See the Light: Afro-Fabulation in Branden Jacob-Jenkins's An Octoroon / Tavia Nyong'o 29 2. The Performance and Politics of Concurrent Temporalities in George C. Wolfe's Shuffle Along / Catherine M. Young 46 3. A Sonic Treatise of Futurity: Universes' Party People / Patricia Herrera 71 Part II. Choreo-Chronographies 4. Joe Louis's Utopic Glitch / Tina Post 103 5. Sorrow's Swing / Jasmine Johnson 127 6. Parabolic Moves: Time, Narrative, and Difference in New Circus / Katherine Zien 142 7. Choreographing Time Travel: Rethinking Ritual through Korean Diasporic Performance / Elizabeth W. Son 173 Part III. Temporal (Im)mobilities: Dwelling Out of Time 8. Carceral Space-Times and The House That Herman Built / Nicholas Fesette 199 9. Performance Interventions: Natality and Carceral Feminism in Contemporary India / Jisha Menon 220 10. Whitnessing Queer Flights: Josué Azor's Lougawou Images and Antihomosexual Unrest in Haiti / Mario Lamothe 242 11. The Body Is Never Given, nor Do We Actually See It / Joshua Chambers-Letson 270 Bibliography 293 Contributors 317 Index 321
£25.19
Duke University Press Infamous Bodies
Book SynopsisSamantha Pinto explores how histories of and the ongoing fame of Phillis Wheatley, Sally Hemings, Sarah Baartman, Mary Seacole, and Sarah Forbes Bonetta generate new ways of imagining black feminist futures.Trade Review“Infamous Bodies is required reading for scholars of black feminist theory. This ambitious, provocative book interrogates female celebrity as a crucial genre through which black women come into political view. Samantha Pinto's careful and thoughtful wrestling with black women celebrities who have become—or perhaps always were—‘difficult’ in and for black feminist studies requires that scholars probe the very meaning of the ‘political’ for black feminist thought. Black feminist theory will be both challenged and transformed by Pinto's careful and counterintuitive readings of black women's representation and by Pinto’s call for the necessary centrality of vulnerability to our scholarly and political work.” -- Jennifer C. Nash, author of * Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality *“With theoretical innovation and a commitment to bringing to light forgotten cultural moments, Samantha Pinto considers notorious figures of black female historical celebrity for what they can tell us about the limits of liberal humanist conceptions of freedom, agency, and consent. Fueled by a powerful sense of urgency, Pinto’s rich and valuable contribution pushes black studies and feminist and queer studies of representation and history to new places while prompting readers to think about how celebrity culture continues to treat black women with the broadest strokes.” -- Francesca T. Royster, author of * Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era *"[A] must-have counterintuitive, historical analysis. . . . The book is well written . . . and would be ideal for the following departments: sociology, women's studies, and African American studies. The book would pair well with the following courses: women authority and power, women's right and status; and feminism." -- Shauntey James * Ethnic and Racial Studies *This excellent text is a must read for those studying cultural and Black feminist representations to understand how those that proliferated in the past inform contemporary debates related to '[B]lack women’s sexual, embodied visibility as always politically suspect.'" -- C. B. Regester * Choice *"Pinto’s work is skilfully crafted. . . . With a theoretical focus of Black feminism, structured through a framework of human rights discourse, and with a call to reframe Black feminist thought and historiography, Pinto’s work offers scholars new possibilities for asking different questions of our material and the way in which we see, read and write about them." -- Rebecca J. Fraser * European Journal of American Culture *"Infamous Bodies feels acutely timely. Dense with citation and conceptual triangulation, Pinto’s is an up-to-date intervention rooted in the history of the field. There are many potential audiences for this text—within literary studies, media studies, sexuality studies, and political theory—but any feminist scholar keeping abreast of contemporary debates will find something of interest here." -- Deborah Thurman * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *"Infamous Bodies is a generative contribution to the field of Black feminist theory, particularly for scholars interested in the early intersections of contracts, labor, and international human rights. This is also an insightful text for practitioners of art criticism and performance theory." -- Margarita Lila Rosa * The Black Scholar *"Pinto offers new radical political futures for black feminist studies. . . . She adds to existing critical human rights scholarship on vulnerability with a novel reconfiguration of what agency and freedom look like." -- Marietta Kosma * US Studies Online *"Pinto’s is an innovative study which expands upon the contemporary discourses central to black feminist scholarship and will likely become an essential read in its field." -- Laura Skinner * Journal of Gender Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Infamous Bodies, Corrective Histories 1 1. Fantasies of Freedom: Phillis Wheatley and the "Deathless Fame" of Black Feminist Thought 31 2. The Romance of Consent: Sally Hemings, Black Women's Sexuality, and the Fundamental Vulnerability of Rights 65 3. Venus at Work: The Contracted Body and Fictions of Sarah Baartman 105 4. Civic Desire: Mary Seacole's Adventures in Black Citizenship 139 5. #DevelopmentGoals: Sovereignty, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, and the Production of the Black Feminist Political Subject 173 Conclusion. Black Feminist Celebrity and the Political Life of Vulnerability 203 Notes 207 References 221 Index 243
£19.79
Duke University Press A Peoples History of Detroit
Book SynopsisMark Jay and Philip Conklin use a Marxist framework to tell a sweeping story of Detroit from 1913 to the present, outlining the complex socio-political dynamics underlying major events in Detroit's past, from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions to deindustrialization and the city's recent bankruptcy.Trade Review“A People's History of Detroit finally allows us to look beyond the mythology of the Motor City, the ruin porn, and the boosterism, and to grasp the dialectic of redevelopment and dispossession, accumulation and abandonment, that has defined its history for a century. Mark Jay and Philip Conklin's book is a model of militant research, recovering the city's traditions of resistance and revealing the staggering human cost behind the hype about the ‘New Detroit.’” -- Alberto Toscano, Reader in Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London“In this intellectually stimulating, bold, and panoramic treatment of Detroit, Mark Jay and Philip Conklin render in fine detail the processes that produce both tremendous wealth and misery. Their work is a powerful antidote to recurrent narratives of market triumphalism, from Ford's five-dollar day to the postwar promises of the affluent society and the casino capitalism touted during the Archer, Kilpatrick, and Bing years. This book is a much-needed account of Detroit's evolution.” -- Cedric Johnson, author of * Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics *"Jay and Conklin’s narrative is at its most gripping during their account of the revolutionary 1960s and its aftermath. In addition to providing a detailed blow by blow account of Detroit’s 1967 uprising, they also argue – in contrast to most left-liberal narratives of the Great Rebellion – that arson and looting should not be viewed as chaotic side effects in contrast to morally justified political unrest, but as part of a broader direct confrontations against the institutions of private property and the state. . . . . These interrogations of memory and history make Detroit’s past feel like anything but past; as a result the city’s radical history blends with today’s global present." -- Andrew Newman * Antipode *"Jay and Conklin work backward before working forward. The authors first offer a people’s history of Detroit’s present, subverting chronology to read the resurgence narrative of Detroit against the grain and reveal the erasure of Black Detroit via the myth of Detroit’s 'Golden Age' in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. This allows them, and therefore us, to understand the systemic problems facing contemporary Detroit first, and then uncover their prehistory second, instead of the other way around." -- Hannah Zeavin * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Equal parts an urban history of a single city and a sweeping theory of capitalism. . . . Through a detailed exposition of one city’s past, A People’s History of Detroit imagines what a people’s future could look like in Detroit—and in other cities." -- David Helps * Public Books *"Recommended. General readers through faculty." -- Y. Kiuchi * Choice *“It is a testament to the clarity and scope of Mark Jay and Philip Conklin’s vision that A People’s History of Detroit—which went to press prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the onset of the most severe capitalist crisis since the 1930s, and the eruption of an unprecedented nationwide uprising (with global reverberations) against police brutality—is replete with insights for those trying to make sense of these deeply uncertain and troubling times.” -- David B. Feldman * Monthly Review *"If Mark Jay and Philip Conklin’s A People’s History of Detroit does not explicitly anticipate the current coronavirus crisis, it certainly explains the contours of its intense and rapid impact." -- Roberta Mock * Times Higher Education *“A timely volume that deserves a wide readership.” -- John Newsinger * International Socialism *“A People’s History of Detroit is that rare book that is both richly detailed and compelling written. . . . The significance of this book, however, is not in the details, but rather in the transferability of the critical interventions they are making in relationship to capitalism, creative destruction, and mythology.” -- Ashley Howard * Journal of American Ethnic History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction. Marx in Detroit 1 1. A Tale of One City, c. 1913–2018 17 2. Fordism and the So-Called Golden Years, c. 1913–1960 75 3. The Conditions of the Great Rebellion, c. 1960–1967 129 4. Revolutionaries and Counterrevolutionaries, c. 1967–1973 155 5. Post-Fordism and Mass Incarceration, c. 1974–2013 195 Conclusion. Competing Visions for Detroit's New Era 221 Notes 231 Bibliography 285 Index 299
£19.79
Duke University Press Manufacturing Celebrity
Book SynopsisDrawing on ethnographic fieldwork, her experience reporting for People magazine, and dozens of interviews with photographers, journalists, publicists, magazine editors, and celebrities, Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and American celebrity culture.Trade Review“Manufacturing Celebrity presents fascinating ethnographic details and piercing social analysis on the production of ‘celebrity’ through sophisticated discussions of Latinx paparazzi, red carpet photographers, and women reporters exploited by the cultural dynamics of tabloid and mainstream news-making. This insightful book will be valuable to communication scholars, feminists, critical race scholars, media anthropologists, and general audiences interested in the representation and production of celebrity culture. Vanessa Díaz writes with a confident and a distinctive scholarly voice.” -- John L. Jackson, Jr., Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania“Vanessa Díaz pulls back the curtain on Hollywood and the people who photograph and write about the movie stars of today and tomorrow. Manufacturing Celebrity is a must-read for anyone desiring keenly observed insights into the struggles of immigrants and women trying to catch some of the stardust in Hollywood's dream factory. Their stories reveal a Hollywood undergoing change that is often resisted as it grapples with the contemporary demographic reality of the United States.” -- Leo R. Chavez, author of * The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation *"This book is a useful resource for entertainment industry practitioners (publicists, reporters, photographers) and media professionals interested in enhancing their understanding of key dynamics that (re)create the modern entertainment industry. Manufacturing Celebrity is also a must read for scholars and students studying communication, media studies, critical cultural studies, public relations, anthropology, sociology, and labor relations." -- W. Alvarez * Choice *“Manufacturing Celebrity is a compelling and revelatory study of the structural hierarchies and labor practices that produce celebrity media.... This book underscores how the ever-evolving boundaries between entertainment and news should not be overlooked.” -- Joanna Arcieri * American Journalism *“Díaz offers a vivid and engaging account of the complex and nuanced lived experiences and social struggles of both paparazzi and celebrity reporters.... Manufacturing Celebrity is a valuable resource for scholars interested in Latinx labor, feminist and gender studies, race studies, and cultural studies of production.” -- Luis E. Rivera-Figueroa * Media Industries *“Manufacturing Celebrity . . . is, most fundamentally, a valuable examination of the role of the worker within the celebrity media production industry. . . . Díaz draws on her unique former career background as a celebrity reporter, which allows her to offer unprecedented insight into the inner workings of the industry.” -- Emily Rauber Rodriguez * Celebrity Studies *“Díaz’s book provides rich ethnographic details into the working lives and conditions of those who manufacture celebrity status through their labor. . . . [Manufacturing Celebrity] will be of significant interest to scholars of race, gender, and labor, as Díaz demonstrates that celebrity media can teach us how hierarchies of labor are reproduced in a neoliberal economy.” -- Gehad Abaza * Exertions *“A stunning critical ethnography of the celebrity-industrial complex. . . . Manufacturing Celebrity is for everyone.” -- Chelsey R. Carter * American Anthropologist *"Díaz’s writing style throughout Manufacturing Celebrity is clear, powerful and compelling. Both thorough and accessible, Díaz is successful in grabbing the attention of both students and scholars of media as well as of the casual reader. Díaz writes a comprehensive and detailed account of the lives of those who are sidelined in the process of manufacturing celebrity and integrates theory without sacrificing the human perspective." -- Jonathan Pye * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. The Precarious Work of Celebrity Media Production 1 I. Pappin' Ain't Easy 1. Shooteando: The Real Paparazzi of Los Angeles 33 2. Latinos Selling Celebrity: Economies and Ethics of Paparazzi Work 76 3. To Live and Die in L.A.: Life, Death, and Labor in the Hollywood-Industrial Complex 95 II. Reporting on the Stars 4. Red Carpet Rituals: Positionality and Power in a Serveilled Space 125 5. Where Reporting Happens: Precarious Spaces and the Exploitation of Women Reporters 150 III. Crafting the Media and the Sociocultural Consequences 6. Body Teams, Baby Bumps, Beauty Standards 181 7. "Brad and Angelina: And Now . . . Brangelina!": The Cultural Economy of (White) Heterosexual Love 218 Conclusion. Reconsidering News and Gossip in the Trump Era 242 Appendix: Interview Sources 251 Notes 255 Bibliography 271 Index 301
£80.10
Duke University Press Beyond the Worlds End
Book SynopsisT. J. Demos explores a range of artistic, activist, and cultural practices that provide compelling and radical propositions for building a just, decolonial, and environmentally sustainable future.Trade Review“T. J. Demos has for some time charted intertwining artistic and activist responses to environmental catastrophe, and here he is at his best. This book is powerful and necessary.” -- Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of * Fray: Art and Textile Politics *“Beyond the World's End rethinks the complex relationship between political ecology and artistic practice. Written in the clear, provocative prose for which T. J. Demos is already widely admired, this important book operates within the framework of environmental and, by extension, climate justice and provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of the current catastrophe.” -- Alexander Alberro, Barnard College"Amply illustrated and well indexed, the book blends nature-culture binaries and lays out the possibilities for lives beyond the world’s end. This pithy, well-researched volume includes an introduction, seven chapters, and notes, and it will interest students of Afrofuturism, art history, ecofeminism, ecology, social justice, visual culture, and myriad related subjects. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals." -- J. Decker * Choice *“Demos...offer[s] a wealth of information on environmentalist artists and ecocritical thinkers who may not be presented to art audiences elsewhere. [His] venturesome examples of art historical ecocriticism model methodologies of engagement that challenge scholars to apply their own talents and imaginations toward new practices of art history for our time.” -- Suzaan Boettger * Art Bulletin *“Demos’ main contribution to the fields of ecology, art history, and geo-politics is the tangible methods he offers against catastrophism. . . . In Beyondthe World’s End, Demos has produced not only a timely teaching tool, but also a touchstone for the ongoing writings and makings of the not-yet.” -- Kate Keohane * Art History *“Beyond the World’s End is a text of impressive scope and depth, whose thematic urgency needs no introduction. . . . If, as in Fredric Jameson’s famous adage, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism, Demos charts a path here for imagining both, and a different world that can be brought into being in what lies beyond these ends.” -- Matthias Kispert * Moving Image Review & Art Journal *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Introduction. The World's End, and Beyond 1 1. Feeding the Ghost: John Akomfrah's Vertigo Sea 23 2. Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction 43 3. The Visual Politics of Climate Refugees 68 4. Gaming the Environment: On the Media Ecology of Public Studio 96 5. Animal Cosmopolitics: The Art of Gustafsson&Haapoga 116 6. To Save a World: Geoengineering, Conflictual Futurisms, and the Unthinkable 137 7. The Great Transition: The Arts and Radical System Change 163 Acknowledgments 195 Notes 199 Index 249
£72.25
Duke University Press The Meaning of Soul
Book SynopsisIn The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role playedTrade Review“Emily J. Lordi’s The Meaning of Soul will likely be the most important book I'll read this decade. Lordi reminds us that to hear soul, one must actively listen to the winding ways of black folk. Lordi is the greatest listener this nation has created, and this book will remind us that liberation starts with black sound.” -- Kiese Laymon“An exquisite work of sound scholarship, The Meaning of Soul offers a new narrative of soul music that compels us to rethink what we have missed about the genre and the political moment it inhabited. It at last articulates a usable, inclusive definition of soul, filling a critical gap in our understanding of black music and sociopolitical experiences in the United States and across the diaspora." -- Zandria F. Robinson“Emily J. Lordi incisively and insightfully takes up the daunting task of resurrecting, dissecting, and disentangling soul’s wide-ranging legacy, spillage, and overlap in black popular culture, black academia, and radical black politics. Her generation-leaping contrasts of the soul and ‘post-soul’ era’s most spiritualized and radicalized avatars from James Brown to Beyoncé serve up poignant and often piquant musicological reveals about classic, epochal recordings of Civil Rights-era and contemporary vintage. Lordi illuminates the evolutionary artistry that ensures the poetics, production, and ethos of soul kulcha sustain staying power as a haunted (and hainted) arbiter of black resilience, resistance, and embattled maroon futurism. With wit, detail, and ruminative verve Lordi narrates and interrogates how the journey of the soul meme’s movements within musical blackness navigates a crossroads full of split desire for both incendiary grassroots action and an infinity of intimate release.” -- Greg Tate"Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon." * Kirkus Reviews *"The Meaning of Soul is a thoughtful, lively journey through rich musical archives that expands the definition of what it means to be a soul artist." -- Rachel Jagareski * Foreword Reviews *"Lordi vividly illustrates that soul artists offer models of black resistance, joy, and community through their songs. This is a must-read for musicologists, critics, and fans of soul." (Starred Review) * Publishers Weekly *"Lordi’s book is essential reading, for she brilliantly guides us to reconsider the meaning of soul and to redefine it." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"A strong choice for libraries supporting African American studies or popular American music programs." -- Jeffrey Hastings * Library Journal *"Detailing not only the evolution of the genre but of the criticism surrounding it, The Meaning Of Soul is a heartfelt appreciation as well as a welcome addition to the scholarly soul canon." -- Michael A Gonzales * The Wire *"Few cultural theorists listen to music this well or joyfully; few critics place their judgments and pleasures within as persuasive a theoretical framework." -- Keith Harris * CityPages *"With welcoming prose that belies its density, The Meaning of Soul focuses on ostensibly unconventional creative choices: soul singers’ covers of songs written by white artists; ad-libs, improvisations, and mistakes; the uses of falsetto and the 'false endings' that trickle throughout the oeuvres of many Black artists. She is attentive to the significant contributions of the female architects of the genre. . . . Lordi gives a deft, concise accounting of soul music’s political and social milieu." -- Danielle A. Jackson * Bookforum *“Meaning of Soul is a needed corrective, challenging how scholarship and much of popular culture remembers the soul music era. Lordi refuses descriptions of the era that only allow its brightest stars and biggest names full consideration.... Her work serves as an exemplar for inclusive genre analysis that makes room for musical possibility.” -- Fredara Mareva Hadley * Journal of Musicological Research *"Lordi’s love for soul music, vibrant writing, and analytical acumen coalesce in a book that is difficult to put down. Readers are unlikely to hear soul music the same way ever again. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers." -- S. Graham * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Keeping On 1 1. From Soul to Post-soul: A Literary and Musical History 19 2. We Shall Overcome, Shelter, and Veil: Soul Covers 46 3. Rescripted Relations: Soul Ad-libs 74 4. Emergent Interiors: Soul Falsettos 101 5. Never Catch Me: False Endings from Soul to Post-soul 126 Conclusion. "I'm Tired of Marvin Asking Me What's Going On": Soul Legacies and the Work of Afropresentism 150 Notes 165 Index 205
£72.25
Duke University Press Abstract Barrios
Book SynopsisJohana Londoño examines how the barrio has become a cultural force that has been manipulated in order to create Latinized urban landscapes that are palatable for white Americans who view concentrated areas of Latinx populations as a threat.Trade Review“Abstract Barrios does a masterful job in moving beyond the hype of the ‘Latinization’ of US urban areas and instead offers a deeply historicized account of the rise of Latinx-majority cities. Crafting a theoretical analysis of the role of Latinx brokers in the late twentieth century, Johana Londoño helps us understand how urban designers use everything from bright colors to ‘Latin’ architecture to domesticate the urban barrio and prepare it for gentrification and the passive inclusion of Latinxs in US urban society.” -- George J. Sanchez, author of * Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 *“A captivating account of the everyday moments that produce the barrio, Abstract Barrios offers a unique view into the built environment of Latinidad. the book's ambition and vastness singularly fills gaping holes in the urban planning and architecture scholarship on Latinxs. Providing a wide-ranging view of how barrios are made and the actors involved in their making, this special and unique book is a crucial work of scholarship for Latinx studies, urban studies, and urban sociology.” -- Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores, author of * Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City *“Londoño employs an innovative multidisciplinary approach in her methodology in Abstract Barrios. She incorporates archival materials, interviews, visual texts (i.e. posters, photographs) and criticism from architecture, history, urban studies, Latinx studies, ethnic studies and cultural studies to provide a more complete portrait of Latinx urban barrios. By doing so, Londoño opens a critical dialogue to reconsider the gaps in these traditional disciplines and to rethink the emerging field of Latinx urban studies.” -- Juanita Heredia * The Latinx Project *“The author masterfully weaves an interdisciplinary account of how abstractions of Latinx culture have been integrated into the built environment and design while continuing to exclude true representation of low-income and marginalized members of those communities.... Abstract Barrios is a timely addition to literature on urban planning, design, and architecture in relation to an increasingly important demographic.” -- Sarah Valentina Diaz * Affilia *“Abstract Barrios enriches the fields of American, Latinx and urban studies and planning by having readers rethink the concept of the barrio as something much greater than the literature has heretofore defined.” -- Salvador Zárate * American Studies *Table of ContentsPreface: The Trouble with Representing Barrios vii Acknowledgments xix Introduction. Brokers and the Visibility of Barrios 1 1. Design for the "Puerto Rican Problem" 23 2. Colors and the "Culture of Poverty" 70 3. A Fiesta for "White Flight" 112 4. Barrio Affinities and the Diversity Problem 143 5. Brokering, or Gentrification by Another Name 183 Coda. Colorful Abstraction as Critique 218 Notes 227 Bibliography 271 Index
£98.60
Duke University Press Traffic in Asian Women
Book SynopsisLaura Hyun Yi Kang demonstrates that the figure of Asian women functions as an analytic with which to understand the emergence, decline, and permutation of US power and knowledge at the nexus of capitalism, state power, global governance, and knowledge production throughout the twentieth century.Trade Review“Deeply thought-provoking and powerfully written, Traffic in Asian Women is an eminently illuminating examination of the contradictory figuration of ‘Asian Women.’ Laura Hyun Yi Kang offers a singular model of critically erudite, deeply engaged scholarship.” -- Lisa Yoneyama, author of * Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes *“Traffic in Asian Women is a meticulously researched, thoroughly compelling, and persistently incisive study. It is a book full of brilliance, one that shows us how to conduct outward facing, politically engaged research in ways that enact intersectional thinking, not only in research but as a way of relating to the world.” -- Kandice Chuh, author of * The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man” *“This is a mode of feminist writing that rejects faith in the twinned powers of exposure and expertise…. Kang’s deft history skips a stone across regimes of visibility and governance, alighting on their connective systems instead of laying claim to the subjects inside.” -- Zoë Hu * Baffler *“Through its detailed historiography, [Traffic in Asian Women] documents how multiple political, legal, and ethical frameworks have ultimately proved inadequate to fully acknowledge violence against Asian women throughout the twentieth century and beyond.” -- Kodai Abe * Journal of Asian American Studies *“Traffic in Asian Women is a generative text for scholars of the comfort system and its legacies, Asian Studies, transnational American and Asian American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies, among others.... Kang demonstrates the value of continuously learning from those possessing intimate knowledge about experiences of racial and gendered violence and living their effects.” -- Nicolyn Woodcock * American Studies *“While written for practitioners of U.S. women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, American studies, and Asian American studies, [Traffic in Asian Women] is likely to appeal to social work scholars and policymakers interested in questions of intersectionality, critical race and ethnic studies, cultural production, human rights, transnational feminism, and social movement.” -- Alexa Ploss * Affilia *“Although Traffic in Asian Women is ostensibly a reconsideration of history, . . . Kang's main interest is in the present and future—in shifting the efforts of those who claim to be feminists and/or human rights activists toward a wider sphere of current injustices. . . . Kang's is a powerful polemic.” -- Margaret D. Stetz * History Teacher *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Traffic in Asian Women 1 1. Asian Women as Method? 19 2. Traffic in Women 51 3. Sexual Slavery 83 4. Violence against Women 117 5. Truth Disclosure 153 6. Just Compensation 189 7. Enduring Memorials 221 Notes 261 Bibliography 311 Index 331
£112.20
Duke University Press Manufacturing Celebrity
Book SynopsisDrawing on ethnographic fieldwork, her experience reporting for People magazine, and dozens of interviews with photographers, journalists, publicists, magazine editors, and celebrities, Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and American celebrity culture.Trade Review“Manufacturing Celebrity presents fascinating ethnographic details and piercing social analysis on the production of ‘celebrity’ through sophisticated discussions of Latinx paparazzi, red carpet photographers, and women reporters exploited by the cultural dynamics of tabloid and mainstream news-making. This insightful book will be valuable to communication scholars, feminists, critical race scholars, media anthropologists, and general audiences interested in the representation and production of celebrity culture. Vanessa Díaz writes with a confident and a distinctive scholarly voice.” -- John L. Jackson, Jr., Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania“Vanessa Díaz pulls back the curtain on Hollywood and the people who photograph and write about the movie stars of today and tomorrow. Manufacturing Celebrity is a must-read for anyone desiring keenly observed insights into the struggles of immigrants and women trying to catch some of the stardust in Hollywood's dream factory. Their stories reveal a Hollywood undergoing change that is often resisted as it grapples with the contemporary demographic reality of the United States.” -- Leo R. Chavez, author of * The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation *"This book is a useful resource for entertainment industry practitioners (publicists, reporters, photographers) and media professionals interested in enhancing their understanding of key dynamics that (re)create the modern entertainment industry. Manufacturing Celebrity is also a must read for scholars and students studying communication, media studies, critical cultural studies, public relations, anthropology, sociology, and labor relations." -- W. Alvarez * Choice *“Manufacturing Celebrity is a compelling and revelatory study of the structural hierarchies and labor practices that produce celebrity media.... This book underscores how the ever-evolving boundaries between entertainment and news should not be overlooked.” -- Joanna Arcieri * American Journalism *“Díaz offers a vivid and engaging account of the complex and nuanced lived experiences and social struggles of both paparazzi and celebrity reporters.... Manufacturing Celebrity is a valuable resource for scholars interested in Latinx labor, feminist and gender studies, race studies, and cultural studies of production.” -- Luis E. Rivera-Figueroa * Media Industries *“Manufacturing Celebrity . . . is, most fundamentally, a valuable examination of the role of the worker within the celebrity media production industry. . . . Díaz draws on her unique former career background as a celebrity reporter, which allows her to offer unprecedented insight into the inner workings of the industry.” -- Emily Rauber Rodriguez * Celebrity Studies *“Díaz’s book provides rich ethnographic details into the working lives and conditions of those who manufacture celebrity status through their labor. . . . [Manufacturing Celebrity] will be of significant interest to scholars of race, gender, and labor, as Díaz demonstrates that celebrity media can teach us how hierarchies of labor are reproduced in a neoliberal economy.” -- Gehad Abaza * Exertions *“A stunning critical ethnography of the celebrity-industrial complex. . . . Manufacturing Celebrity is for everyone.” -- Chelsey R. Carter * American Anthropologist *"Díaz’s writing style throughout Manufacturing Celebrity is clear, powerful and compelling. Both thorough and accessible, Díaz is successful in grabbing the attention of both students and scholars of media as well as of the casual reader. Díaz writes a comprehensive and detailed account of the lives of those who are sidelined in the process of manufacturing celebrity and integrates theory without sacrificing the human perspective." -- Jonathan Pye * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. The Precarious Work of Celebrity Media Production 1 I. Pappin' Ain't Easy 1. Shooteando: The Real Paparazzi of Los Angeles 33 2. Latinos Selling Celebrity: Economies and Ethics of Paparazzi Work 76 3. To Live and Die in L.A.: Life, Death, and Labor in the Hollywood-Industrial Complex 95 II. Reporting on the Stars 4. Red Carpet Rituals: Positionality and Power in a Serveilled Space 125 5. Where Reporting Happens: Precarious Spaces and the Exploitation of Women Reporters 150 III. Crafting the Media and the Sociocultural Consequences 6. Body Teams, Baby Bumps, Beauty Standards 181 7. "Brad and Angelina: And Now . . . Brangelina!": The Cultural Economy of (White) Heterosexual Love 218 Conclusion. Reconsidering News and Gossip in the Trump Era 242 Appendix: Interview Sources 251 Notes 255 Bibliography 271 Index 301
£20.69
Duke University Press Abstract Barrios
Book SynopsisIn Abstract Barrios Johana LondoÑo examines how Latinized urban landscapes are made palatable for white Americans. Such Latinized urban landscapes, she observes, especially appear when whites feel threatened by concentrations of Latinx populations, commonly known as barrios. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and visual analysis of barrio built environments, LondoÑo shows how over the past seventy years urban planners, architects, designers, policy makers, business owners, and other brokers took abstracted elements from barrio design-such as spatial layouts or bright colors-to safely Latinize cities and manage a long-standing urban crisis of Latinx belonging. The built environments that resulted ranged from idealized notions of authentic Puerto Rican culture in the interior design of New York City's public housing in the 1950s, which sought to diminish concerns over Puerto Rican settlement, to the Fiesta Marketplace in downtown Santa Ana, California, built to counteract white flight in the 1980s. Ultimately, LondoÑo demonstrates that abstracted barrio culture and aesthetics sustain the economic and cultural viability of normalized, white, and middle-class urban spaces.Trade Review“Abstract Barrios does a masterful job in moving beyond the hype of the ‘Latinization’ of US urban areas and instead offers a deeply historicized account of the rise of Latinx-majority cities. Crafting a theoretical analysis of the role of Latinx brokers in the late twentieth century, Johana Londoño helps us understand how urban designers use everything from bright colors to ‘Latin’ architecture to domesticate the urban barrio and prepare it for gentrification and the passive inclusion of Latinxs in US urban society.” -- George J. Sanchez, author of * Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 *“A captivating account of the everyday moments that produce the barrio, Abstract Barrios offers a unique view into the built environment of Latinidad. the book's ambition and vastness singularly fills gaping holes in the urban planning and architecture scholarship on Latinxs. Providing a wide-ranging view of how barrios are made and the actors involved in their making, this special and unique book is a crucial work of scholarship for Latinx studies, urban studies, and urban sociology.” -- Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores, author of * Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City *“Londoño employs an innovative multidisciplinary approach in her methodology in Abstract Barrios. She incorporates archival materials, interviews, visual texts (i.e. posters, photographs) and criticism from architecture, history, urban studies, Latinx studies, ethnic studies and cultural studies to provide a more complete portrait of Latinx urban barrios. By doing so, Londoño opens a critical dialogue to reconsider the gaps in these traditional disciplines and to rethink the emerging field of Latinx urban studies.” -- Juanita Heredia * The Latinx Project *“The author masterfully weaves an interdisciplinary account of how abstractions of Latinx culture have been integrated into the built environment and design while continuing to exclude true representation of low-income and marginalized members of those communities.... Abstract Barrios is a timely addition to literature on urban planning, design, and architecture in relation to an increasingly important demographic.” -- Sarah Valentina Diaz * Affilia *“Abstract Barrios enriches the fields of American, Latinx and urban studies and planning by having readers rethink the concept of the barrio as something much greater than the literature has heretofore defined.” -- Salvador Zárate * American Studies *Table of ContentsPreface: The Trouble with Representing Barrios vii Acknowledgments xix Introduction. Brokers and the Visibility of Barrios 1 1. Design for the "Puerto Rican Problem" 23 2. Colors and the "Culture of Poverty" 70 3. A Fiesta for "White Flight" 112 4. Barrio Affinities and the Diversity Problem 143 5. Brokering, or Gentrification by Another Name 183 Coda. Colorful Abstraction as Critique 218 Notes 227 Bibliography 271 Index
£25.19
Duke University Press Traffic in Asian Women
Book SynopsisIn Traffic in Asian Women Laura Hyun Yi Kang demonstrates that the figure of "Asian women" functions as an analytic with which to understand the emergence, decline, and permutation of U.S. power/knowledge at the nexus of capitalism, state power, global governance, and knowledge production throughout the twentieth century. Kang analyzes the establishment, suppression, forgetting, and illegibility of the Japanese military "comfort system" (19321945) within that broader geohistorical arc. Although many have upheld the "comfort women" case as exemplary of both the past violation and the contemporary empowerment of Asian women, Kang argues that it has profoundly destabilized the imaginary unity and conceptual demarcation of the category. Kang traces how "Asian women" have been alternately distinguished and effaced as subjects of the traffic in women, sexual slavery, and violence against women. She also explores how specific modes of redress and justice were determined by several overlapping geopolitical and economic changes ranging from U.S.-guided movements of capital across Asia and the end of the Cold War to the emergence of new media technologies that facilitated the global circulation of "comfort women" stories.Trade Review“Deeply thought-provoking and powerfully written, Traffic in Asian Women is an eminently illuminating examination of the contradictory figuration of ‘Asian Women.’ Laura Hyun Yi Kang offers a singular model of critically erudite, deeply engaged scholarship.” -- Lisa Yoneyama, author of * Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes *“Traffic in Asian Women is a meticulously researched, thoroughly compelling, and persistently incisive study. It is a book full of brilliance, one that shows us how to conduct outward facing, politically engaged research in ways that enact intersectional thinking, not only in research but as a way of relating to the world.” -- Kandice Chuh, author of * The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man” *“This is a mode of feminist writing that rejects faith in the twinned powers of exposure and expertise…. Kang’s deft history skips a stone across regimes of visibility and governance, alighting on their connective systems instead of laying claim to the subjects inside.” -- Zoë Hu * Baffler *“Through its detailed historiography, [Traffic in Asian Women] documents how multiple political, legal, and ethical frameworks have ultimately proved inadequate to fully acknowledge violence against Asian women throughout the twentieth century and beyond.” -- Kodai Abe * Journal of Asian American Studies *“Traffic in Asian Women is a generative text for scholars of the comfort system and its legacies, Asian Studies, transnational American and Asian American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies, among others.... Kang demonstrates the value of continuously learning from those possessing intimate knowledge about experiences of racial and gendered violence and living their effects.” -- Nicolyn Woodcock * American Studies *“While written for practitioners of U.S. women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, American studies, and Asian American studies, [Traffic in Asian Women] is likely to appeal to social work scholars and policymakers interested in questions of intersectionality, critical race and ethnic studies, cultural production, human rights, transnational feminism, and social movement.” -- Alexa Ploss * Affilia *“Although Traffic in Asian Women is ostensibly a reconsideration of history, . . . Kang's main interest is in the present and future—in shifting the efforts of those who claim to be feminists and/or human rights activists toward a wider sphere of current injustices. . . . Kang's is a powerful polemic.” -- Margaret D. Stetz * History Teacher *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Traffic in Asian Women 1 1. Asian Women as Method? 19 2. Traffic in Women 51 3. Sexual Slavery 83 4. Violence against Women 117 5. Truth Disclosure 153 6. Just Compensation 189 7. Enduring Memorials 221 Notes 261 Bibliography 311 Index 331
£27.90
Duke University Press Unseeing Empire
Book SynopsisIn Unseeing Empire Bakirathi Mani examines how empire continues to haunt South Asian American visual cultures. Weaving close readings of fine art together with archival research and ethnographic fieldwork at museums and galleries across South Asia and North America, Mani outlines the visual and affective relationships between South Asian diasporic artists, their photographic work, and their viewers. She notes that the desire for South Asian Americans to see visual representations of themselves is rooted in the use of photography as a form of colonial documentation and surveillance. She examines fine art photography by South Asian diasporic artists who employ aesthetic strategies such as duplication and alteration that run counter to viewers'' demands for greater visibility. These works fail to deliver on viewers'' desires to see themselves, producing instead feelings of alienation, estrangement, and loss. These feelings, Mani contends, allow viewers to question their own visibilTrade Review“Bakirathi Mani demands that we expand the geographic and temporal frame through which to grasp South Asian American representation so that we can engage with the processes of U.S. settler colonialism and racialization. Unseeing Empire makes an outstanding contribution to Asian American and South Asian diaspora and visual culture studies.” -- Gayatri Gopinath, author of * Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora *“Beautifully written, meticulously crafted, and combining powerful personal reflection with rigorous scholarship, Unseeing Empire brings various sets of photographic archives and practices of the early twenty-first century into conversation, from fine art photography and vernacular images to ethnographic pictures. This impressive book makes a vital contribution to several fields, including contemporary art and visual culture studies, museum and curatorial studies, postcolonial theory, and Asian American and American studies.” -- Nicole R. Fleetwood, author of * Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration *“Unseeing Empire joins an exciting body of scholarship that examines the intersections of visual culture, racial formation, and affect.... [It] implores us to remember the colonial legacies of documentation, surveillance, and display that continue to haunt the images we hope to see.” -- Manan Desai * Journal of American Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. The Work of Seeing: Photography and Representation in Diaspora 1 1. Uncanny Feelings: Diasporic Mimesis in Seher Shah's Geometric Landscapes and the Spectacle of Force 33 2. Representation in the Colonial Archive: Annu Palakunnathu Matthew's An Indian from India 70 3. Exhibiting Immigrants: Visuality, Visibility, and Representation at Beyond Bollywood 119 4. Archives of Diaspora: Gauri Gill's The Americans 159 Epilogue. Curating Photography Seeing Community Notes 215 Bibliography 245 Index 261
£112.20
Duke University Press Emancipations Daughters
Book SynopsisRiché Richardson examines how five iconic black womenMary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama, and Beyoncédefy racial stereotypes and construct new national narratives of black womanhood in the United States.Trade Review“The women Riché Richardson examines broaden notions of black womanhood in opposition to the dominant imagery perpetuated by filmmakers, advertisers, and other cultural producers in the United States. This broad spectrum of black womanhood from the early twentieth century to the present allows Richardson to make an expansive argument about the role of these women in the broader American imaginary. The idea of black women as mothers of the nation outside of the mammy role is a powerful one that has not been framed in the way Richardson does here. Emancipation's Daughters is an engaging and important book.” -- Lisa B. Thompson, author of * Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class *“Riché Richardson has given our tumultuous American moment a brilliant gift. Emancipation’s Daughters is an impeccably crafted guide to the struggles, creativity, and iconic labors of African American mothers and their emancipated daughters.” -- Houston A. Baker, Distinguished University Professor, Vanderbilt University"Richardson employs a diversity of resources throughout, including political speeches, artistic images and photos, memorials and monuments, biographies and autobiographies, and literary works to consider how Black women leaders have redefined or advanced a notion of American selfhood that is different from the national story of the 'founding fathers.' . . . Throughout the book, Richardson nicely complements the text with images to illustrate her case studies and overall thesis. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." * Choice *"Emancipation’s Daughters significantly intervenes in how we understand Black women leaders in ways that resist the mama-fication (and even aunt-ification) that most Black women leaders experience in the public sphere. This is most powerfully exemplified in the way Richardson evokes the term 'daughters' as opposed to the familiar framing of Black women leaders as mothers. This strategic choice is quite compelling." -- Stacie McCormick * American Literary History *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: An Exemplary American Woman 1 1. Mary McLeod Bethune's "My Last Will and Testament" and Her National Legacy 39 2. From Rosa Parks's Quiet Strength to Memorializing a National Mother 87 3. America's Chief Diplomat: The Politics of Condoleezza Rice from Autobiography to Art and Fashion 128 4. First Lady and "Mom-in-Chief": The Voice and Vision of Michelle Obama in the Video South Side Girl and in American Grown 178 Conclusion: Beyoncé's South and the Birth of a "Formation" Nation 220 Notes 235 Bibliography 257 Index 281
£75.65
Duke University Press Sentient Flesh
Book SynopsisIn Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty ''cause . . . us is human flesh' as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiesis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance offlesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way pastTrade Review“Sentient Flesh constitutes a unique and emphatic announcement of what a certain fundamental strain of black studies has long been—the disruptive turning and overturning of the ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological foundations of the modern world. Its extreme and profound generativity is bracing and invigorating, and it forces and allows its readers to do more, confront more, read more, and think more. I love this book, I feel this book, I am pleased by this book because I am undone and disturbed and disrupted and transported by this book.” -- Fred Moten, author of * Black and Blur *“Weaving a clear and critical story about the making of the so-called Negro and how this making is deeply connected to questions of the flesh not the body, R. A. Judy makes one of the most critical arguments in contemporary humanities. Sentient Flesh is well placed to make a major intervention.” -- Anthony Bogues, author of * Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom *“This text is nothing if not a call for communal forms of thinking.... R.A. Judy has presented us with an opening to consider and reconsider what it means to be Black in this world and I hope it is a challenge that is taken up and serves to enrich the archive of Black Radical Thought.” -- Michael E. Sawyer * New Formations *"R. A. Judy’s Sentient Flesh, in its 600 or so pages, stands as a monumental contribution to this literature, leading us through, sometimes in dazzling detail, a teeming array of figures, themes, disciplinary scenes, and texts in order to arrive at a full account of its main conceptual contributions." -- Emanuela Bianchi * Cultural Critique *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Notes on Translation and Transliteration xi Preface: Preliminary Signposts xiii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: Body and Flesh 1 [1st Set] On Lohengrin's Swan 25 Sentient Flesh 150 [2nd Set] Sentient Flesh Dancing 215 Poiēsis in Black 252 Para-Semiosis 319 Coda: Gifting Blues Love-Improper 418 Notes 457 Bibliography 543 Index 573
£95.20
Duke University Press The Sense of Brown
Book SynopsisThe Sense of Brownis José Esteban Muñoz''s treatise on brownness and being as well as his most direct address to queer Latinx studies. In this book, which he was completing at the time of his death, Muñoz examines the work of playwrights Ricardo Bracho and Nilo Cruz, artists Nao Bustamante, Isaac Julien, and Tania Bruguera, and singer José Feliciano, among others, arguing for a sense of brownness that is not fixed within the racial and national contours of Latinidad. This sense of brown is not about the individualized brown subject; rather, it demonstrates that for brown peoples, being exists within what Muñoz calls the brown commons—a lifeworld, queer ecology, and form of collectivity. In analyzing minoritarian affect, ethnicity as a structure of feeling, and brown feelings as they emerge in, through, and beside art and performance, Muñoz illustrates how the sense of brown serves as the basis for other ways of knowing and being inTrade Review“The final work of José Esteban Muñoz—scholar, mentor, and precious node in an intergenerational and transnational web of intellectual and social relations—will be received with eager enthusiasm and a box of tissues.” -- Juana María Rodríguez, author of * Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings *“In The Sense of Brown, José Esteban Muñoz maps and grapples with an evolving theory and method of feeling and being in the world that he names brown. In this work, brownness 'is already here, . . . vast, present, and vital.’ Muñoz gives his theory ‘historically specific affective particularity,’ rejecting the abjective. Read on their own and in tandem with Muñoz's earlier works, these thirteen essays written with care and a sense of urgency outlive his too-soon passing. Lovingly edited, they are a gift.” -- Christina Sharpe, author of * In the Wake: On Blackness and Being *"Conceptualizing Latinx studies within the terms Muñoz offers, those of affect, aesthetics, and performance, gives way for more room in which to construct a Latinx studies that seeks to counter anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity, assimilationism, settler nation-state borders and boundaries, language essentialisms, and other settler colonial logics which merely reify the power structures perpetuating global precarity, exploitation, violence, and death." -- Marcos Gonsalez * ASAP/Journal *"The Sense of Brown is a classic academic work, so it has a density that requires effort to parse through, but it’s well worth the read. In this book, Muñoz examines how brownness, particularly for queer Latinx people, becomes a 'lifeworld' that reveals itself through performance of all kinds, including plays, films, and albums. If you loved his prior work, then The Sense of Brown serves as a perfect ending—both putting a bow on his scholarship and creating pathways for those who want to further it." -- Evette Dionne * Bitch Magazine *"The book is his most pointed intervention into Latinx studies and the contradictions of Latinx racializations, and it represents the work of nearly two decades, done alongside and around two books and over a dozen essays and lectures. . . . As students, friends, and readers, we meet The Sense of Brown, finally, as a consolation in the midst of a global crisis that’s paradoxically lonely and chaotically social." -- Roy Pérez * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Offers ... startling moments of insight and ... profound intellectual generosity." -- Jane Hu * Bookforum *"Expertly edited after his passing by Joshua Chambers-Letson and Tavia Nyong’o, The Sense of Brown is Muñoz’s final work, and it’s a true testament to an intersectional project that suggests that 'queerness is in the horizon, forward dawning and not-yet-here. Brownness diverges from my definition of queerness. Brownness is already here.'” -- Maximilíano Durón * ARTnews *"With The Sense of Brown, José Esteban Muñoz left a love-letter to brownness that acts as a dream for its desire. Extending to the minerals of the soil, to the animals, and to the people who bare its shade, it is an ode to a brown of rapturous multiplicity. . . [T]his book and Muñoz’s thoughts remain an arsenal full for any minoritarian subject who desires to understand and even love themselves, and their sense of being, more–a radical proposition." -- Jess Saldaña * Lambda Literary Review *"The Sense of Brown is more than a sketch of brownness as an ontology of relations; it is an opportunity to sit inside Muñoz’s writing and thinking space, an almost wistful feeling of being in his thoughts as they formed, as they firmed. Reading Muñoz’s essays invokes a meditative feeling; one gets a sense that Muñoz was reflecting on his ideas, the drafty in/coherence of this ensemble reveal the essay as process. The essays are inviting, soft and melancholic." -- Moon Charania * Society and Space *"The Sense of Brown . . . provides theoretical concepts in performance studies, Latinx studies, queer theory, and other studies of race, gender, and sexuality that are invaluable to expanding our notions of performance and racial hegemony." -- kt shorb * E3W Review of Books *"Chambers-Letson and Nyong’o provide a beautiful genealogy of Muñoz’s scholarship in queer studies, Latinx studies, and performance studies. . . . [T]he book provides readers with myriad understandings of brownness, feeling/sensing brown, and the brown commons." -- James Huynh * GLQ *"Muñoz offers a different way of being found in art and world making." -- Patricia Ybarra * Performance Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Editors' Introduction. The Aesthetic Resonance of Brown / Joshua Chambers-Letson and Tavia Nyong'o ix 1. The Browns Commons 1 2. Feeling Brown: Ethnicity and Affect in Ricardo Bracho's The Sweetest Hangover (and Other STDs) 8 3. The Onus of Seeing Cuba: Nilo Cruz's Cubanía 24 4. Meandering South: Isaac Julien and The Long Road to Mazatlán 29 5. "Chico, What Does It Feel Like to Be a Problem?": The Transmission of Brownness 36 6. The Vulnerability Artist: Nao Bustamante and the Sad Beauty of Reparation 47 7. Queer Theater, Queer Theory: Luis Alfaro's Cuerpo Polizado 59 8. Performing the Bestiary: Carmelita Tropicana's With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?/ Con Que Culo se Sienta la Cucaracha? 78 9. Performing Greater Cuba: Tania Bruguera and the Burden of Guilt 86 10. Wise Latinas 100 11. Brown Worldings: José Rodríguez-Soltero, Tania Bruguera, and María Irene Fornés 118 12. The Sense of Wildness: The Brown Commons after Paris Burned 128 13. Vitalism's Afterburn: The Sense of Ana Mendieta 141 Notes 151 Bibliography 167 Index 175
£72.25
Duke University Press For a Pragmatics of the Useless
Book SynopsisWhat has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In For a Pragmatics of the Useless Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter two that a central refrain echoes: 'All black life is neurodiverse life.' This is not an equation, but an 'approximation of proximity.' Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity 'schizz' around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with Félix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition''s accounts of black life and the aesthetics of blackTrade Review“Taking black studies seriously as the epistemology of operation from which to practice thought, Erin Manning does more than simply apply black studies to conversations about neurotypicality, autism, and language; she grapples with what black studies attempts to do—to shift the epistemological horizon of thought's horizon.” -- Ashon T. Crawley, author of * The Lonely Letters *“Given her expertise, philosophical acumen, and passion for questions of neurodiversity, I am excited that Erin Manning is the person to orchestrate the encounter between neurodiversity and blackness. Who else but Manning could bring together explorations into process philosophy, experimental practice, black studies, and neurodiversity? This is a superb and important work.” -- Stefano Harney, coauthor of * The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study *"The argument of the book ranges across a wide field of topical concerns: whiteness, Black sociality, neurodiversity and neurotypicality, affect and feeling, and autism, all within the scope of considerations mainly related to aesthetics, agency, freedom, and power relations. The book itself is clearly situated at the crossroads of such fields as philosophy, neuroscience, and Black studies, and will surely be of interest to graduate students and academics who are seeking the cutting-edge territory of critical work that reaches beyond the boundaries of the university as normally configured. Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty." -- M. Uebel * Choice *"Manning’s book might also be described as a field guide for academics who want to discover or rediscover the conditions by which thinking (as theory, poetry, art, or pedagogy) might generate values apart from those prescribed by our capitalist institutions. . . . [T]he book proffers many encounters with artists, art exhibits, and artistic projects that enable us, as readers, to explore the pragmatics that Manning is invoking." -- Ada S. Jaarsma * Letters in Canada *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Prelude. Fugitively, Approximately 1 1. For a Pragmatics of the Useless 15 2. Toward a Politics of Immediation 33 Pocket Practice. nestingpatching 55 3. What Things Do When They Shape Each Other 75 Pocket Practice. backgroundigforegrounding 103 4. Experimenting Immediation: Collaboration and the Politics of Fabulation 115 5. Practicing the Shizz 145 Interlude. How Do We Repair? 199 6. Me Lo Dijo un Pajarito: Neurodiversity, Black Life, and the University As We Know It 213 Pocket Practice. livingdoing 235 7. Not at a Distance: On Touch, Synesthesia, and Other Ways of Knowing 245 Pocket Practice. ticcingflapping 271 8. Cephaloped Dreams: Finance at the Limit 289 Coda. schizziganarchiving 309 Notes 317 References 345 Index 359
£80.75
Duke University Press Aesthetics of Excess
Book SynopsisAnalyzing the personal clothing, makeup, and hairstyles of working-class Black and Latina girls, Jillian Hernandez examines how cultural discourses of aesthetic value racialize the bodies of women and girls of color.Trade Review“Aesthetics of Excess brings together culo, spandex, and style to make bold provocations on race, aesthetics, and embodiment. Making a sparkling intervention into conversations on racialized sexuality, Hernandez uses the "body narratives" we inherit to add fleshy substance to our understanding of how color, culture, and class shape how subjects traverse geographies of belonging.” -- Juana María Rodríguez, author of * Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings *“I am thrilled that Jillian Hernandez has found a thoughtful, thorough way to begin a conversation around the Latinx, academic, and institutional discomfort with what they perceive as young women's problematic, not-Latina-feminist-enough gender politics. What a joy it is to know that this highly original and downright necessary book is now in the world. Aesthetics of Excess makes an outstanding contribution to feminist scholarship.” -- Maria Elena Buszek, author of * Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture *"There’s a real beauty to being able to own yourself and how you show up in the world; Aesthetics of Excess illuminates it." -- Evette Dionne * Bitch Media *“Black and Latina aesthetic practices are carefully crafted and layered. Aesthetics of Excess treats these self-stylings with the nuance they deserve, understanding them as interventions in a visual landscape that surveilles excess as a way to continually police working-class women of color.” -- Kristie Soares * Latino Studies *“In a world that continually tells Black and Latina girls to take up less space, to be less visible, to do their work without comment, sigh, or sass, Hernandez and her team at WOTR celebrate the excess. . . . Hernandez deftly explores and theorizes the contours of blackness and latinidad in Miami.” -- Aria S. Halliday * American Quarterly *“Hernandez manages the difficult feat of crafting an approachable text that could be read by the young women she speaks with while remaining faithful to the demands of a scholarly monograph. . . . [The Aesthetics of Excess] is a thrilling work that never forgets that loving its subjects is essential to scholarly precision.” -- Iván Ramos * Lateral *"The book’s strength lies in Hernandez’s sharp arguments and the theoretical threads she interweaves. Rather than considering Black and Latina body aesthetics against the implicit whiteness of categories deemed 'standard' or 'tasteful' in mainstream US culture, the book names them, claims them, and presents them in their own light." -- Alicia Eler * Hyperallergic *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Interlude One 29 1. Reading Black and Latina Embodiment in Miami 37 2. Sexual-Aesthetic Excess: Or, How Chonga Girls Make Class Burn 63 3. "Fine as Hell": The Aesthetic Erotics of Masculinity 99 Interlude Two 133 4. Rococo Pink: The Power of Nicki Minaj's Aesthetics of Fakery 145 Interlude Three 187 5. Encounters with Excess: Girls Creating Art, Theory, and Sexual Bodies 201 Interlude Four 233 Epilogue 251 Notes 271 References 279 Index 293
£75.65
Duke University Press Writing in Space 19732019
Book SynopsisWriting in Space, 1973-2019 gathers the writings of conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady, including artist statements, scripts, magazine articles, critical essays on art and culture, and interviews.Trade Review“Lorraine O'Grady's work has always been driven by embodied experiences, questioning the construction of identity and what it means to be human. This extraordinary volume charts O'Grady's fascinating musings on these subjects, tracing and shedding new light on her impressive forty-year career whilst highlighting the urgency and continued relevance of her work in our current moment. O'Grady once told me, ‘Everything I do could be a book’; this publication goes some way toward meeting that possibility.” -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries“Lorraine O'Grady is one of the foremost conceptual artists of the last century. Writing in Space, 1973-2019 is an indispensable contribution to our appreciation of the breadth and innovation of her singular practice; it asks us to think beyond rigid boundaries that prevent a nuanced consideration of the mutually transformative power of ‘text’ and ‘image.’ O'Grady's practice creates new worlds, wherein photography, criticism, literature, and history leave the reader with a renewed sense of creative possibility.” -- Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem"This is the first book to offer a comprehensive overview of O’Grady’s writing. Monumental texts, canonical essays, interviews, performance transcripts, and previously unpublished material form the edited volume, affirming both the range and reach of the artist’s significant impact upon an art world that has only belatedly recognized her. . . . The book establishes O’Grady’s literary brilliance that shines through her multifaceted creative practice, as she consistently pushes the art world toward deeper thought and political consciousness." -- Alexandra M. Thomas * Hyperallergic *"Lorraine O’Grady’s importance as a performance artist has tended to overshadow her talent as a writer. Ahead of a Brooklyn Museum retrospective due next year, critic and art historian Aruna D’Souza put together a must-read volume featuring O’Grady’s shrewd musings on her own work, the intersections of Blackness and gender, and notions of visibility." -- Alex Greenberger * ARTnews *"A deeply nourishing account of her life, from the years preceding her full approach to artistry and criticism until recent times. . . . Such a collection, 46 years into O’Grady’s exceptional career, reflects how the art industry has long excluded Black women artists. It is a delicate and difficult read, and a manifestation of the many possibilities embedded in thoughtful collaboration between an artist and editor who have been longtime supporters of each other’s work." -- Tyra A. Seals * Art Papers *"This volume is more than a collection of writing by an important artist whose work and thoughts have very belatedly come to larger attention. It is an extremely eloquent analysis of the New York art world since 1973 by one of the most articulate and profound conceptual artists to address questions of race, class, diasporic identity, non-Western philosophy and aesthetics and female subjectivity." -- Andrea Kirsh * The Art Blog *"For nearly a half century, Lorraine O’Grady has produced a profound body of art and writing that reckons with and contests the logics of anti-Blackness, coloniality, and extraction that underpin cultural institutions. The texts anthologized in her new volume, Writing in Space, 1973–2019, immerse readers in O’Grady’s prescience. . . . The collection spans the four decades of O’Grady’s career with interdisciplinary writings that address questions of formal beauty in concept-driven art, interrogate where and how power operates in every part of the organization of museum space, and highlight Black avant-garde and abstract work." -- Christina Sharpe * Art in America *"An absorbing cover-to-cover read, no surprise considering the artist’s roots in literature." -- Holland Cotter * New York Times *"The book is astonishing for O’Grady’s way with words alone. We see how she refines her own artist biographies and the framing of her process over time. Her performance scripts are so richly detailed that they read like closet dramas." -- Rahel Aima * Bookforum *"[W]onderful and inspiring. . . . The collection of O’Grady’s erudite and charged writings spans 1973 to 2019; each entry contests and reimagines structures of power." -- Lisa Le Feuvre * The Art Newspaper *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: For Those Who Will Know / Aruna D'Souza xix 1. Statements and Performance Transcripts Two Biographical Statements (2012 and 2019) 1Cutting Out the New York Times (CONYT), 1977 (2006) 6Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1955 (1981) 8Rivers, First Draft, 1982: Working Script, Cast List, Production Credits (1982) 11 Statement for Moira Roth re: Art Is . . ., 1983 (2007) 23Body Is the Ground of My Experience, 1991: Image Descriptions (2010) 27 Studies for a Sixteen-Diptych Installation to Be Called Flowers of Evil and Good, 1995–Present (1998) 30 2. Writing in Space Performance Statement #1: Thoughts about Myself, When Seen as a Political Performance Artist (181) 37 Performance Statement #2: Why Judson Memorial? or, Thoughts about the Spiritual Attitudes of My Work (1982) 40 Performance Statement #3: Thinking Out Loud: About Performance Art and My Place in It (1983) 43Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline (1977) 50 Interview with Cecilia Alemani: Living Symbols of New Epochs (2010) 53 Interview with Amanda Hunt on Art Is . . . (2015) 60 On Creating a Counter-confessional Poetry (2018) 64 3. Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity Black Dreams (1982) 69 Interview with Linda Montano (1986) 77 Dada Meets Mama: Lorraine O'Grady on WAC (1992) 84 The Cave: Lorraine O'Grady on Black Women Film Directors (1992) 88 Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity (1992/1994) 94Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism (2007) 110 4. Hybridity, Diaspora, and Thinking Both/And On Being the Presence That Signals an Absence (1993) 115 Some Thoughts on Diaspora and Hybridity: An Unpublished Slide Lecture (1994) 119 Flannery and Other Regions (1999) 126 Responding Politicially to William Kentridge (2002) 131 Sketchy Thoughts on My Attraction to the Surrealists (2013) 136 Two Exhibits: The Diptych vs. the Triptych (1998) and Notes on the Diptych (2018) 139 Introducing: Lorraine O'Grady and Juliana Huxtable (2016) 142 5. Other Art Worlds A Day at the Races: Lorraine O'Grady on Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Black Art World (1993) 169 SWM: On Sean Landers (1994) 176 Poison Ivy (1998) 181The Black and White Show, 1982 (2009) 184 Email Q&A with Artforum Editor (2009) 198 My 1980s (2012) 203Rivers and Just Above Midtown (2013, 2015) 213 6. Retrospectives Interview with Laura Cottingham (1995) 219 Interview with Jarrett Earnest (2016) 239 The Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Project, 1980–1983 (2018) 250 Job History (from a Feminist "Retrospective") (2004) 260 First There Is a Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then . . . ? (1973) 269 The Wailers and Bruce Springsteen at Max's Kansas City, July 18 1973 (1973) 278 Notes 287 Index 311 Credits
£75.65