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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.
Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.
Doctoral Dissertations
This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I …
Imaging Her Selves: Black Women Artists, Resistance, Image And Representation, 1938-1956, Heather Zahra Caldwell
Imaging Her Selves: Black Women Artists, Resistance, Image And Representation, 1938-1956, Heather Zahra Caldwell
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation focuses specifically on dancer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), pianist Hazel Scott (1920-1981), cartoonist Jackie Ormes (1911-1985), singer Lena Horne (1917-2010), and graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). It explores the artistic, performative, and political resistance deployed by these five African-American women activists, artists, and performers in the period between 1937 and 1957. The principal form of resistance employed by these women was cultural resistance. Using a mixture of archival research, first person interview, biography, as well as other primary and secondary sources, I explore how these women constructed personas, representations, and media images of African-American women to …
When The Girls Came Out To Play: The Birth Of American Sportswear, Patricia Campbell Warner
When The Girls Came Out To Play: The Birth Of American Sportswear, Patricia Campbell Warner
University of Massachusetts Press Books
A study of the evolution of American women’s clothing, When the Girls Came Out to Play traces the history of modern sportswear as a universal style that broke down traditional gender roles. Patricia Warner shows how this profound cultural shift, which did not reach fruition until World War II, originated during the previous century with the gradual expansion of socially acceptable physical activity for women. Behind this development was a growing interest in sports and exercise that was further nurtured by the establishment of schools of higher education for women.The participation of women in athletic pursuits previously reserved for men …
The Needles Eye: Women And Work In The Age Of Revolution, Marla R. Miller
The Needles Eye: Women And Work In The Age Of Revolution, Marla R. Miller
University of Massachusetts Press Books
Among the enduring stereotypes of early American history has been the colonial Goodwife, perpetually spinning, sewing, darning, and quilting, answering all of her family’s textile needs. But the Goodwife of popular historical imagination obscures as much as she reveals; the icon appears to explain early American women’s labor history while at the same time allowing it to go unexplained. Tensions of class and gender recede, and the largest artisanal trade open to early American women is obscured in the guise of domesticity.
In this book, Marla R. Miller illuminates the significance of women’s work in the clothing trades of the …
Review Of Soulfires: Young Black Men On Love And Violence, Amilcar Shabazz
Review Of Soulfires: Young Black Men On Love And Violence, Amilcar Shabazz
Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series
A review of a literary and cultural anthology on African American males on love and violence.