Description
Book SynopsisA groundbreaking collection of sixteen essays that examines the productive intersection of the fields of black and queer studies
Trade Review“
Black Queer Studies makes a dynamic contribution to the shifting landscape of queer studies. This volume will surely transform our understandings of both black studies and queer studies, and it will create new idioms for the analysis and theorization of race and sexuality.
Black Queer Studies is necessary and long overdue.”—Judith Halberstam, author of
Female Masculinity“There are moments of epistemological excitement that recognize changes already ongoing, and then there are moments that at the same time both recognize and generate new ways of knowing. The creation of
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology is such a moment. It changes our horizons of thought. I’m excited about its effect on my thinking and grateful to the contributors and editors for the boundary stretching.”—Wahneema Lubiano, editor of
The House That Race Built“This fine collection of essays demonstrates the importance of black queer quests and questions.”—Jennifer DeVere Brody, author of
Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture“Cogent, dealing well with some of the race/gender topics addressed intelligently in studies such as William Hawkeswood's
One of the Children (1996) and Roderick Ferguson's
Aberrations in Black (2004). Recommended.” -- R B Shuman * Choice *
"Insightful. . . . From the racial segregation that can occur in gay neighborhoods to current debates about the depiction of black gays and lesbians in film, many of the essays pursue important questions about sexual and racial identity. . . . Each of these essays feels more like a prayer, a kind you'd hope to hear in church: a calm and quiet attempt to speak to the complex fears and thoughts that trouble all our hearts." -- Quinn Eli * News & Observer *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Foreword: “Home” Is a Four-Letter Word / Sharon P. Holland ix
Introduction: Queering Black Studies/ “Quaring” Queer Studies / E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson 1
I. DISCIPLINARY TENSIONS: BLACK STUDIES/QUEER STUDIES
Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? / Cathy J. Cohen 21
Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity / Roderick A. Ferguson 52
Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies / Dwight A. McBride 68
Outside in Black Studies: Reading from a Queer Place in the Diaspora / Rinaldo Walcott 90
The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Evidence, Everyday Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge / Phillip Brian Harper 106
“Quare” Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother / E. Patrick Johnson 124
II. REPRESENTING THE “RACE”: BLACKNESS, QUEERS, AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY
Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm / Marlon B. Ross 161
Privilege / Devon W. Carbado 190
“Joining the Lesbians”: Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility / Kara Keeling 213
Why Are Gay Ghettoes White? / Charles I. Nero 228
III. HOW TO TEACH THE UNSPEAKABLE: RACE, QUEER STUDIES, AND PEDAGOGY
Embracing the Teachable Moment: The Black Gay Body in the Classroom as Embodied Text / Bryant Keith Alexander 249
Are We Family? Pedagogy and the Race for Queerness / Keith Clark 266
On Being a Witness: Passion, Pedagogy, and the Legacy of James Baldwin / Maurice O. Wallace 276
IV. BLACK QUEER FICTION: WHO IS “READING” US?
But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction / Jewelle Gomez 289
James Baldwin‘s
Giovanni‘s Room: Expatriation, “Racial Drag,” and Homosexual Panic / Mae G. Henderson 298
Robert O‘Hara‘s
Insurrection: “Que(e)rying History” / Faedra Chatard Carpenter 323
Bibliography 349
Contributors 371
Index 375
