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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
Keep Claiming Space!, Koritha Mitchell
Keep Claiming Space!, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
Substantial foreword to the "Hands Up. Don't Shoot!" special issue of CLAJ.
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
The more I learn about the violence currently plaguing LGBT communities, the more it reminds me of the brutal practice of lynching, which has been the focus my research for the past 15 years. Ultimately, both forms of violence are designed to deny targeted groups recognition as citizens. Relying on my expertise regarding racial violence as well as the data on anti-LGBT attacks collected by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), this essay notes similarities between lynching at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. The piece identifies five parallels: 1) the mundane quality of the …
Belief And Performance, Morrison And Me, Koritha Mitchell
Belief And Performance, Morrison And Me, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
A chapter discussing the lessons I learned from Toni Morrison's THE BLUEST EYE that continue to guide me. The insights gained from that novel have informed my intellectual work and my ability to navigate the U.S. academy.
James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings The Blues For Mister Charlie, Koritha Mitchell
James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings The Blues For Mister Charlie, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
James Baldwin worked tirelessly to expose the myths that allowed Americans to delude themselves. Scholars have long recognized this as the driving force of his fiction and non-fiction, but this mission was also very much linked to Baldwin's conception of theater. This essay culls Baldwin's theater theory from his non-fiction, especially his seldom-discussed The Devil Finds Work (1976). Baldwin believed that theater could "re-create" people by helping us to re-discover our human connection, and he believed that stage actors could show the way. Baldwin's respect for stage actors develops over time, however. He reaches his conclusions only after realizing—in hindsight—how …
Sisters In Motherhood(?): The Politics Of Race And Gender In Lynching Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Sisters In Motherhood(?): The Politics Of Race And Gender In Lynching Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
Chapter analyzing May Miller's Nails and Thorns, a lynching play not discussed in my book LIVING WITH LYNCHING.
Performance Review Of By Hands Unknown, Koritha Mitchell
Performance Review Of By Hands Unknown, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
Performance Review of BY HANDS UNKNOWN, theatrical presentation composed of 7 one-act lynching plays from the 1920s and 1930s.
Generative Challenges: Notes On Artist/Critic Interaction, Koritha Mitchell
Generative Challenges: Notes On Artist/Critic Interaction, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
This essay recounts my experiences at an invigorating scholarly retreat. The community I encountered proved to be both challenging and affirming. In that way, it was quite different from the experience that academia typically generates for scholars of color. I write with honesty about institutionalized racism as an attempt to mentor through publication. I want others to know that if they notice the intractability of racism (even) in scholarly environments, they are not alone...and it is not just in their imagination.
Mamie Bradley's Unbearable Burden: Sexual And Aesthetic Politics In Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Koritha Mitchell
Mamie Bradley's Unbearable Burden: Sexual And Aesthetic Politics In Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
This essay offers a reading of Bebe Moore Campbell's 1992 novel Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which re-imagines the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and its aftermath. I argue that the novel is a tribute to Till and his mother, Mamie Bradley, but that it also illustrates the agony of being the survivor whose pain occasions such tributes. Through Delotha Todd, the character loosely based on Bradley, Campbell imagines the mother's burden to have been especially unbearable because so many strangers, including Campbell herself, claimed to share it. In the process of acknowledging the many facets Delotha's pain, Campbell …
(Anti-)Lynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, And The Evolution Of African American Drama, Koritha Mitchell
(Anti-)Lynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, And The Evolution Of African American Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
My initial articulation of the history of black-authored lynching plays and their tendency to avoid portraying physical violence.