Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- African American hair (1)
- African American identity (1)
- African American literature (1)
- African American music (1)
- African American studies (1)
-
- African American vernacular tradition in music (1)
- African Americans (1)
- African Americans in academia (1)
- African-American hair (1)
- American fiction (1)
- American literature (1)
- Audience participation in musical performance (1)
- Beauty (1)
- Black folklore (1)
- Black hair theory (1)
- Black humor (1)
- Black like me (1)
- Contemporary literature (1)
- Cultural musical tradition (1)
- Culture (1)
- Detective fiction (1)
- Dreadlocks (1)
- Film studies (1)
- Folklore (1)
- Hair and nonconformity (1)
- Hip hop culture (1)
- Imitation of Life (1)
- Jazz (1)
- Jazz performance (1)
- John Howard Griffin (1)
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
Invisible Dread, From Twisted: The Dreadlock Chronicles, Bertram D. Ashe
Invisible Dread, From Twisted: The Dreadlock Chronicles, Bertram D. Ashe
English Faculty Publications
This excerpt traces the issues and process surrounding the dreadlocking of an African-American professor's hair. The personal history leading up to the decision to grow locks is briefly addressed, as is the experience of getting twisted for the first time and some reactions to the new hairstyle. Twisted discusses issues of cultural authenticity and academic nonconformity. It examines dreadlocks as a pathway to explore black identity, but in opposing ways: the act of locking ones hair does display unconventional blackness - but it also participates in a preexisting black style. To what extent, the excerpt asks, can the adoption of …
"Hair Drama" On The Cover Of "Vibe" Magazine, Bertram D. Ashe
"Hair Drama" On The Cover Of "Vibe" Magazine, Bertram D. Ashe
English Faculty Publications
This study consists of a cultural reading of the cover photograph of the June-July 1999 issue of Vibe magazine. It explores the relationship between Mase, an African-American male rap star, and the three anonymous African-American female models that surround him. The study interprets the cover through the long, straightened hair of the models, locating the models' hair in a historically-informed context of black hair theory and practice. The study argues that the models' presence on the cover, particularly their "bone straight and long" hair, "enhances" Mase in much the same way breast-augmented "trophy women" "enhance" their mates. Ultimately, the study …
The Psychology Of Uncertainty: (Re)Inscribing Indeterminacy In Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies, Adrienne Gosselin
The Psychology Of Uncertainty: (Re)Inscribing Indeterminacy In Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies, Adrienne Gosselin
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
On The Jazz Musician's Love/Hate Relationship With The Audience, Bertram D. Ashe
On The Jazz Musician's Love/Hate Relationship With The Audience, Bertram D. Ashe
English Faculty Publications
An assistant professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, Bertram D. Ashe discusses how the intersection of an African American cool style with a black vernacular tradition and multi-racial audiences complicates audience-performer relations. In the vernacular tradition, performers play not "to" but "with" an audience, drawing on the call-response patterns that characterize the black aesthetic. Ashe notes that the vernacular tradition is not racial but cultural, and class can be as important a marker as race in determining audience expectations. Differing cultural backgrounds create, in Ashe's words, "competing realities," distinct sets of expectations that can shape a …
Racial Etiquette And The (White) Plot Of Passing:(Re) Inscribing" Place" In John Stahl's Imitation Of Life, Adrienne Gosselin
Racial Etiquette And The (White) Plot Of Passing:(Re) Inscribing" Place" In John Stahl's Imitation Of Life, Adrienne Gosselin
English Faculty Publications
Examines the machinations of racial etiquette and ways in which John Stahl's 1934 film `Imitation of Life' enforces the politics of the white plot of passing and place. Passing plot as utilized by American white and black writers of the period; Antimiscegenation film.
Various Black Virginians As Told To Daryl Cumber Dance, Daryl Cumber Dance
Various Black Virginians As Told To Daryl Cumber Dance, Daryl Cumber Dance
English Faculty Publications
Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans, published in 1978, derived from fieldwork done far a doctoral dissertation at Virginia Commonwealth University by Daryl Cumber Dance (the only woman named Daryl I have heard of aside from Daryl Hannah). She gathered stories and verses from black Virginians in colleges, senior citizens' centers, and a penitentiary. Though she doesn't bring to the party an editorial touch as enlivening as Zora Neale Hurston's, she has an ear and-unlike far, far too many assiduous collectors of folktales - knows how to capture vocal rhythms on a page.
The Rhetorical Effectiveness Of Black Like Me, Hugh Rank
The Rhetorical Effectiveness Of Black Like Me, Hugh Rank
English Faculty Publications
In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white Southern novelist, disguised himself as a Negro and traveled through the South to experience "what it is like to be a Negro in a land where we keep the Negro down." The brief narrative account of this experience is recorded in Black Like Me, a book which wom the Saturday Review's Anisfield-Wolf award in 1962 for its contribution toward race relations. In brief, why is Black Like Me rhetorically effective?