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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas
Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas
American Studies Faculty Publication Series
On May 14, 2014, three white Boston city councilors refused to vote to approve a resolution honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education because, as one remarked, “I didn’t want to get into a debate regarding forced busing in Boston.” Against the recent national proliferation of celebrations of civil rights milestones and legislation, the controversy surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the court decision that mandated busing to desegregate Boston public schools speaks volumes about the historical memory of Boston’s civil rights movement. Two highly acclaimed contemporary works of children’s literature set during or inspired by Boston’s …
'People Want To See What Happened': Treme, Televisual Tourism, And The Racial Remapping Of Post-Katrina New Orleans, Lynnell L. Thomas
'People Want To See What Happened': Treme, Televisual Tourism, And The Racial Remapping Of Post-Katrina New Orleans, Lynnell L. Thomas
American Studies Faculty Publication Series
Occupying the space between cultural reproduction and theatrical production, the HBO series Treme offers an important vantage point from which to analyze the intersection of race, class, culture, and media representation animating New Orleans’s post-Katrina tourist identity. Treme illustrates the tension between the welcome recognition and celebration of New Orleans black expressive culture and its spectacularization and commodification. The resuscitation of tourist tropes and an emphasis on jazz and heritage music in the series often render the city’s history of racial conflict and injustice invisible or subordinate to new narratives of cross-racial unity among Katrina survivors and paternalistic actions by …
'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas
'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas
American Studies Faculty Publication Series
This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.