{"product_id":"the-content-of-our-caricature-9781479889587","title":"The Content of Our Caricature","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWinner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic\/Scholarly Work\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHonorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTraces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRevealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[Wanzo] offers a brilliant, concisely written excursion into the fraught nature of African American comic art. * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eA singular achievement. Rebecca Wanzo gives shape to new and necessary ways of understanding the development of comic art in the United States that also resonate with broader conversations about blackness and visual narrative. Her study delves into the ambivalent expressions of citizenship, identity, and power that are central to how cartoonists picture race. Along the way, Wanzo bridges aesthetics and cultural theory through expert readings of editorial comics and newspaper strips, superhero serials, underground comix, historical graphic novels, and more. -- Qiana Whitted, co-editor of \u003ci\u003eComics and the U.S. South\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom underground comix to \u003ci\u003eBoondocks\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eWanzo brilliantly treats moments in the history of caricature and demonstrates anew how popular culture has perpetuated and popularized generations of grotesque imagery. Wanzo’s gift is in the singular way she reads African American cartoonists who themselves redeployed and engaged the visual grammar of caricature while also interrogating American citizenship. An authoritative, nuanced book. -- Jared Gardner, author of \u003ci\u003eProjections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First Century Storytelling\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe text does a good job at connecting the historical cartoon archive and its stereotypical visual representations of Blacks to current events [...] \u003ci\u003eThe Content of Our Caricature\u003c\/i\u003e invites the reader to a more complex reading of Black representations in caricature that transcends the tendency towards binary oppositions * Visual Studies *\u003cbr\u003eWanzo, like the artists she investigates, reframes caricature so that we might see and read it differently. Because to not see caricature, as Wanzo powerfully concludes, 'will always be a sign of forgetting the monstrosity crafted by historical injuries, a weight carried by all black people perpetually in the wake—and on the brink—of real political change\". * INKS *\u003cbr\u003eWanzo’s contribution to this rising field is vital and unique, given her specific focus on the aesthetics of comics art using the artistic tradition of caricature as a way to engage with social and political issues. Wanzo rightly points out how ‘many of the works’ done to date in Black comic studies—several of which emphasize superhero comic books over other genres and formats— ‘focus on cultural histories or pay little attention to aesthetics’. * The Journal of African American History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Content of our Caricature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eis unique in its focus on Black cartoonists and their use of Black caricatures in comics, editorial cartoons, graphic biographies, and underground comix…This careful, incisive study describes and shows the range of surprising, amusing, entertaining, antagonistic, outrageous, and offensive ways Black cartoonists represent or consider the paradox of Black citizenship. * American Literary History *\u003cbr\u003eThe book makes a compelling case for why we should, despite our initial intuitions to look away, engage with what seem like racist representations, stereotypes, and caricatures. Wanzo provides sophisticated textual and literary analyses to argue that African American cartoonists have been questioning, reconstructing, and using racist stereotypes to critique notions of the “ideal citizen” in the United States. * International Journal of Communication *\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409092583767,"sku":"9781479889587","price":22.79,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781479889587.jpg?v=1730505413","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-content-of-our-caricature-9781479889587","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}