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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon Jun 2023

On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon

Criticism

What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy’s found-object installation Library of Congress, one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy’s …


Sitting Here With You In The Future: Reimagining The Human Through Digital Art, Jared Z. Sloan Jan 2023

Sitting Here With You In The Future: Reimagining The Human Through Digital Art, Jared Z. Sloan

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This paper presents a novel construction of the Human that arises from digital art. Taking an interdisciplinary approach incorporating perspectives from queer theory, afropessimism, science and technology studies, and more, I analyze the works of three digital artists: Lucas LaRochelle, Arafa Hamadi, and Natalie Paneng. I chart the ways in which these artists negotiate borders between the physical and digital, human and non-human, and real and fantastical to challenge hegemonic Western ideas about humanity and the individual. I claim that by restricting the information available to the user in various ways, the picture of the Human that emerges from each …


"A Quixote In Imagination Might Here Find...An Ideal Baronage": Landscapes Of Power, Enslavement, Resistance, And Freedom At Sherwood Forest Plantation, Lauren K. Mcmillan Feb 2022

"A Quixote In Imagination Might Here Find...An Ideal Baronage": Landscapes Of Power, Enslavement, Resistance, And Freedom At Sherwood Forest Plantation, Lauren K. Mcmillan

Northeast Historical Archaeology

In the winter of 1862, two armed forces descended upon Fredericksburg; one blue, one gray. After suffering heavy losses during the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Union Army retreated to the northern banks of the Rappahannock River, making camp in Stafford County. From December 1862 until June 1863, the Union Army overran local plantations and small farm holdings throughout the area, including at Sherwood Forest, the home of the Fitzhugh family. Sherwood Forest was used as field hospital, a signal station, a balloon launch reconnaissance station, and a general encampment during the winter and spring of 1862/1863. Throughout the roughly six-month …


America’S Forgotten Laborers: The World Of Enslaved Craftsmen, Zack Dow Jan 2022

America’S Forgotten Laborers: The World Of Enslaved Craftsmen, Zack Dow

Emerging Writers

This article examines the underrepresented world of enslaved artisans in the American south. In the minds of many, enslaved Americans were confined to unskilled plantation labor. While such labor constituted a large part of the work of the enslaved, master craftspeople go unrecognized, perpetuating an imagine of unskilled, nominal workers that undermines the accomplishments of the millions of black artisans working at the time.


Painting Outside Of The Lines: How Race Assignment Can Be Rethought Through Art, Giovanni Mella-Velazquez Aug 2021

Painting Outside Of The Lines: How Race Assignment Can Be Rethought Through Art, Giovanni Mella-Velazquez

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

For centuries art has been used to make us think about our own human experiences. Unfortunately, works usually reflect the era which they were painted in; this has led to various artists showing, maintaining, and therefore reinforcing racist thoughts in our cultures. Art can be used to create a new narrative for our race assignments and their meanings. The idea of loving one's roots has been prevalent in many cultures, but in art form a disconnect between history and the everyday experience can arise which could miss the mark in helping us redefine our own race. Therefore, artwork which empowers …


Understanding The Importance Of Statues: Symbols Of Racism In Modern Society, Theresa Vanwormer Jun 2021

Understanding The Importance Of Statues: Symbols Of Racism In Modern Society, Theresa Vanwormer

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Whether it is a monument, statue, plaque, or mural, the values and ideologies that are memorialized on public land reflect what reality the people of a country are choosing to remember. The United States’ political and racial history has led to the creation of controversial memorials, including memorials that honor the Confederacy and its leaders, influencing moral concepts based in racism, violence, and oppression. The continued veneration of these symbols on public land sends the message to the Black community that their oppressors are honored as heroes and that the society they live in still allows for their abuse. Annette-Gordon …


To Let See. The Shocking Picture As A Social Mobilization Weapon, Beatriz Martínez Sosa Apr 2021

To Let See. The Shocking Picture As A Social Mobilization Weapon, Beatriz Martínez Sosa

Artl@s Bulletin

This paper analyses the role that Emmett Till’s postmortem pictures had in the emergence of the modern civil rights movement. When they circulated in magazines, newspapers, and television in 1955, African Americans mobilized all over the U.S., so the pictures worked as a mobilization weapon. I intend to develop some hypotheses to explain this effect. To this end, the paper comprises four parts: an outline of the murder case; an analysis of the pictures’ formal and semantic features as well as the discourses and context where they were released; an examination of Till’s figure as a martyr through the effects …


A List Of Racialized Black Dolls: 1850-1940, Anthony F. Martin Jan 2016

A List Of Racialized Black Dolls: 1850-1940, Anthony F. Martin

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

Between 1850 and 1940 Black racialized dolls made in Europe and the northern United States saturated the marketplace with the peak years in the 1920s. These dolls were advertised with pejorative names and descriptions that typed cast African Americans as domestics and labors on mythical antebellum landscapes assisted White children in shaping Black people as inferior to Whites. Data mining doll encyclopedias, websites, and catalogs, I have compiled a list of Black racialized dolls. Additionally, I have provided advertisements of positive imagine Black dolls from The Crisis and The Negro World that provided a counterweight to the stereotyped dolls.


Terracotta Pipes With Triangular Engravings, Flavia Zorzi, Daniel G. Schávelzon Jan 2016

Terracotta Pipes With Triangular Engravings, Flavia Zorzi, Daniel G. Schávelzon

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

The discovery of two smoking pipes from seventeenth-century contexts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is used to suggest the presence in colonial times of a new set of stylistic norms derived from African traditions that are expressed at a regional scale not only in smoking pipes, but in a variety of items of material culture. These terracotta pipes, recovered at Bolívar 373 and the Liniers House sites, are characterized by their particular geometric decorative pattern, achieved by engravings and incisions. Similar specimens were found elsewhere in Buenos Aires, as well as in Cayastá (province of Santa Fe, Argentina) and Brazil.


Historic Black Lives Matter: Archaeology As Activism In The 21st Century, Kelley F. Deetz, Ellen Chapman, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto Apr 2015

Historic Black Lives Matter: Archaeology As Activism In The 21st Century, Kelley F. Deetz, Ellen Chapman, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

May 19, 2015 would have been Malcolm X’s 90th birthday, and fifty years after his assassination we are still dealing with the ghosts of slavery, Jim Crow, and the manifestations of institutionalized racism. While much progress was made from the Civil Rights Movement, we still have far to go. This past year brought the topics of slavery, civil rights, and racism back into the mainstream. These stories are not new for those of us who work tirelessly to chronicle these historical and contemporary narratives in an attempt to educate the public about Black history. The “New Civil Rights Movement” launched …


Richmond’S Archaeology Of The African Diaspora: Unseen Knowledge, Untapped Potential, Ellen Chapman Jan 2015

Richmond’S Archaeology Of The African Diaspora: Unseen Knowledge, Untapped Potential, Ellen Chapman

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Don’T Call It A Comeback, We’Ve Been Here For Years: Reintroducing The African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, Kelley Deetz Jan 2015

Don’T Call It A Comeback, We’Ve Been Here For Years: Reintroducing The African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, Kelley Deetz

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Related Media And Additional Reading Jan 2015

Related Media And Additional Reading

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


The Significance Of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why It's The Wrong Place For A Baseball Stadium, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto Jan 2015

The Significance Of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why It's The Wrong Place For A Baseball Stadium, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


The Thread: Reflections On #Blacklivesmatter And 21st Century Racial Dynamics, Kelley Deetz Jan 2015

The Thread: Reflections On #Blacklivesmatter And 21st Century Racial Dynamics, Kelley Deetz

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Diggin' Uncle Ben And Aunt Jemima: Battling Myth Through Archaeology, Kelley Deetz Jun 2010

Diggin' Uncle Ben And Aunt Jemima: Battling Myth Through Archaeology, Kelley Deetz

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


After Abolition: Britain And The Slave Trade Since 1807, Marika Sherwood, Christian Hogsbjerg Mar 2008

After Abolition: Britain And The Slave Trade Since 1807, Marika Sherwood, Christian Hogsbjerg

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Documented Struggles And Triumph: African American Art, Holbrook Lauren Jan 2008

Documented Struggles And Triumph: African American Art, Holbrook Lauren

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

The emergence of African Americans as artists began in the Colonial Era with simple portraits. The first African American artist to gain recognition as a portraitist was Joshua Johnston who worked in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The majority of his portraits were of wealthy European American families, who were slave owners (Fig. 1). Johnston was formerly a slave, and as rumors suggests, his former owner was also a portraitist from which Johnston acquired his skills. Interestingly, Johnston did not sign or date any of his works (Lewis 15). It seems as though a suggestion to his name …


Archaeology, Language, And The African Past, Roger Blench Mar 2007

Archaeology, Language, And The African Past, Roger Blench

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


On The Transportation Of Material Goods By Enslaved Africans During The Middle Passage: Preliminary Findings From Documentary Sources, Jerome S. Handler Dec 2006

On The Transportation Of Material Goods By Enslaved Africans During The Middle Passage: Preliminary Findings From Documentary Sources, Jerome S. Handler

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Gender And Resistance At North Bend Plantation: The Beginnings Of An Interdisciplinary Study Of An Enslaved Community, Kelley Deetz Mar 2006

Gender And Resistance At North Bend Plantation: The Beginnings Of An Interdisciplinary Study Of An Enslaved Community, Kelley Deetz

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Writing African History, Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia Mar 2006

Writing African History, Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Digging City's History: Finds Show A Black Middle Class Had Once Thrived On Beacon Hill, Jenna Russell Aug 2005

Digging City's History: Finds Show A Black Middle Class Had Once Thrived On Beacon Hill, Jenna Russell

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Online Exhibition By The Museum Of African Diaspora, Modou Dieng, Lauren Woods Aug 2005

Online Exhibition By The Museum Of African Diaspora, Modou Dieng, Lauren Woods

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Review Of "Foul Means: The Formation Of A Slave Society In Virginia", Michelle Lemaster Aug 2005

Review Of "Foul Means: The Formation Of A Slave Society In Virginia", Michelle Lemaster

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Free Frank Leaves Descendants A Legacy Of Freedom, Deborah Gertz Husar Aug 2005

Free Frank Leaves Descendants A Legacy Of Freedom, Deborah Gertz Husar

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


African-American History Museum Opens Doors, Margaret Horton Edsall Aug 2005

African-American History Museum Opens Doors, Margaret Horton Edsall

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Blacks Pin Hope On Dna To Fill Slavery's Gaps In Family Trees, Amy Harmon Aug 2005

Blacks Pin Hope On Dna To Fill Slavery's Gaps In Family Trees, Amy Harmon

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Pan-African History: Political Figures From Africa And The Diaspora Since 1787, Hakim Adi, Marika Sherwood, Robert Trent Vinson Jul 2005

Pan-African History: Political Figures From Africa And The Diaspora Since 1787, Hakim Adi, Marika Sherwood, Robert Trent Vinson

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract provided.