Africana Studies Commons^™

Professional Mourning: Billie Holiday’S “Strange Fruit” And The Remaking Of Black Consciousness, Samuel Galen Ng

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This article examines the impact that Billie Holiday’s singing of “Strange Fruit” had on African American audiences from 1939 until Holiday’s death in 1959. It argues that Holiday’s performances embodied and induced a state of collective mourning by way of their politically strategic efforts to frame Black existence as a site of ongoing endangerment and corresponding fear. With carefully crafted, professional expertise, Holiday’s singing generated a feeling of shared vulnerability among her Black audiences and, furthermore, presented that feeling as the very foundation of Black being. Effecting its intended political work, her singing thus prompted some of these listeners to …

Race, Ethnicity And Higher Education In The African Diaspora: Guest Editors' Introductory Note, José Jackson-Malete, Amy Jamison, Vaughn W. M. Watson, Aaron Kamugisha, Monique D. A. Kelly, Upenyu S. Majee

Africana Studies: Faculty Books

Authors in this issue of Alliance for African Partnership Perspectives, "Race, Ethnicity, and Higher Education in the African Diaspora," responded to a Call for Thought Pieces from anywhere in the world—urgent, critical reflections of issues around race and ethnicity in higher education institutions and key stakeholder and collaborator organizations in Africa and the African Diaspora.

George Lamming And Caribbean Political Conscience, Aaron Kamugisha

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Positive Discrimination Doesn't Mean Anything": Understanding Black French Ambivalence Toward Affirmative Action, Crystal M. Fleming, Hewan Girma

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

Using in-depth qualitative interviews with French Caribbeans of African descent (N=52) in the Paris region, this study examines minority perspectives on the possibility of racial or ethnic affirmative action in France. Through a narrative analysis of their justifications for supporting or criticizing affirmative action, we find that the majority of our respondents expressed reservations over the possibility of quotas and other affirmative action initiatives, with many describing ambivalent views and mixed emotions. In explaining their discomfort with the idea and implementation of affirmative action, respondents point to concerns over the efficacy and legitimacy of such policies, a moral defense of …

May We Forever Stand: A History Of The Black National Anthem By Imani Perry (Review), Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Garifunizando Ambas Américas: Hemispheric Entanglements Of Blackness/Indigeneity/Afrolatinidad, Paul Joseph López Oro

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

Central Americans of African descent are in the margins on the histories of transmigrations and political movements in the isthmus and their diasporas. The absence of Black Central Americans in Latinx Studies and Central American Studies is an epistemological violence inherited from Latin American mestizaje. The insurgence of Afro-Latinx Studies is an intellectual and political response to the erasure and negation of Black people and Blackness in the field of Latinx Studies. In this essay, I map out the political urgency to call for a refashioning of Afrolatinidad that dismantles the dangerous allure of ethno-racial nationalism (i.e., Afro-[insert nation-state]) and …

“Blessed Within My Selves”: The Prophetic Visions Of Our Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay discusses the intellectual and poetic work of Audre Lorde and its significance for contemporary global movements for liberation. My discussion considers Lorde’s theorizing of difference and power, as well as her poetic work, as prophetic interventions within the context of the 1960s to the early 1990s. I argue that Lorde’s intellectual and literary work is the result of a black woman’s embodied experiences within the intersections of many struggles—notably, the ones against racism, sexism, and homophobia. This strategic positionality becomes, as I discuss, the centrality of Lorde’s prophetic vision of collective and inclusive liberation: one that permeates past …

Rosana Paulino And The Art Of Refazimento: Reconfigurations Of The Black Female Body In The Land Of Racial Democracy, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay analyzes the historical and aesthetic significance of the visual art project Assentamento(s) (2012-2013) by Rosana Paulino. Her work reinscribes the black female body into the historical narrative of Brazil, complicating long-established notions of “Brazilianness”. By using art techniques and materials that combine lithography, digital printing, drawing, sewing, video, and sculpting, Paulino develops a multi-layered artistic assembly that she describes as a process of refazimento (“remaking”). Paulino pushes the boundaries of the historical archives, highlighting both the struggles and agency of black women within Brazilian society. I argue that, as a contemporary black woman visual artist, Paulino engages in …

Marielle, Presente!, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

Thank you so much for being here tonight to mourn and protest the brutal assassination of Marielle Franco. 1 A special thanks to our Smith student, Marcela Rodrigues Guimarães, who emailed some of us last weekend and infected us with her passion, mobilizing faculty and other students to gather here tonight. Marcela invited me to share a bit about how Marielle’s assassination fits into a much larger picture of transnational contexts of racism, state-sanctioned violence, and black women’s struggle for liberation. I could not be talking about Marielle under the current circumstances in any other way but from a place …

Considerations For Research And Development Of Culturally Relevant Mindfulness Interventions In American Minority Communities, Jeffrey Proulx, Raina Croff, Barry Oken, Carolyn M. Aldwin, Crystal M. Fleming, Dessa Bergen-Cico, Thao Le, Misbah Noorani

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

As many health disparities in American minority communities (AMCs) are stress related, there has been an increased interest in the development of mindfulness programs as potential stress-reduction measures in these communities. However, the bulk of the extant literature on mindfulness research and mindfulness interventions is based upon experiences with the larger White community. The intent of this commentary is to share a framework that includes key cultural considerations for conducting research and developing culturally salient mindfulness programs with AMCs. We build on our experiences and the experiences of other researchers who have explored mindfulness in African- and Native American communities; …

The City-Child's Quest: Spatiality And Sociality In Paule Marshall's The Fisher King, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

In The Fisher King, Paule Marshall depicts urban spatial and social relations that resonate with the psychic and social ruptures of the African Diaspora. The novel’s central characters comprise a blended family with Southern African American and Caribbean roots. They reckon with problems of social marginalization, alienation, and fragmentation, engendered by their various experiences of dislocation. While mindful of the diverse histories, values, and worldviews within black America’s heterogeneous collectivity, Marshall ultimately privileges black women’s perspectives on the limits and possibilities of traversing geographic and social spaces. Hattie Carmichael, the “City child” who occupies the moral center of the novel, …

“Bein Alive & Bein A Woman & Bein Colored”:The Metaphysical Dilemma In Ntozake Shange, Sherley Anne Williams, And Toni Morrison | “Beinalive & Beinawoman & Bein Colored”: Odilemametafísico Em Ntozake Shange, Sherley Anne Williams E Toni Morrison, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay is an analysis of three literary works by black women writers from the U.S.: Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Sherley Ann Williams’ novel Dessa Rose, and Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In my analysis, I use Shange’s trope of the “methaphysical dilemma” to consider the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality in these writers’ textual representations of black women’s bodies. Writing against a historical legacy of colonialism and domination that defined black bodies as “primitive” or “unbridled” (bell hooks 1991), I argue that these works illustrate some …

Blackness Written, Erased, Rewritten James Weldon Johnson, Teju Cole, And The Palimpsest Of Modernity, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Books

Book summary:

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) exemplified the ideal of the American public intellectual as a writer, educator, songwriter, diplomat, key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and first African American executive of the NAACP. Originally published anonymously in 1912, Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is considered one of the foundational works of twentieth-century African American literature, and its themes and forms have been taken up by other writers, from Ralph Ellison to Teju Cole. Johnson's novel provocatively engages with political and cultural strains still prevalent in American discourse today, and it remains in print over …

Beyond The Flesh: Contemporary Representations Of The Black Female Body In Afro-Brazilian Literature, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay takes an intersectional and transnational approach to analyze how selected poetic texts by contemporary Afro-Brazilian writers Conceição Evaristo, Esmeralda Ribeiro Cristiane Sobral, Miriam Alves, and Elisa Lucinda (re)design portrayals of Afro-descendant/black female bodies. As cultural artifacts, I argue that these poetic/political constructs give evidence of Afro- Brazilian female bodies as historical: on one hand, they represent the embodiment of “otherness” as they historically differ from the standards of (white) “normalcy;” on the other hand, they carry both the silenced histories of racial and sexual exploitation and the appeal of hyper-sexualized and exoticized stereotypes. I am also interested in …

“Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá”: Garífuna Subjectivities And The Politics Of Diasporic Belonging, Paul Joseph López Oro

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

López Oro analyzes two census campaigns—one in New York City and one in Honduras—geared toward Garifuna populations in order to interrogate larger questions about how Garifuna populations are included, or not, within dominant discourses of Honduran multiculturalism and US Latinidad. He argues that Garifuna are a quintessentially diasporic population who disrupt common assumptions about what it means to be Honduran, Latino, and/or Black in the Americas.

Passing Strange: Embodying And Negotiating Difference In Academia, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Books

Book summary: In recent decades, American universities have begun to tout the “diversity” of their faculty and student bodies. But what kinds of diversity are being championed in their admissions and hiring practices, and what kinds are being neglected? Is diversity enough to solve the structural inequalities that plague our universities? And how might we articulate the value of diversity in the first place? Transforming the Academy begins to answer these questions by bringing together a mix of faculty—male and female, cisgender and queer, immigrant and native-born, tenured and contingent, white, black, multiracial, and other—from public and private universities across …

Righting/Writing The Black Female Body In Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Africana Studies: Faculty Books

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Vo. 9 Of Du Bois Review, Michèle Lamont, Jessica S. Wellburn, Crystal M. Fleming

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Between Catastrophe And Carnival: Creolized Identities, Cityspace, And Life Narratives, Cynthia Dobbs, Daphne Lamothe, Theresa Tensuan

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Carnival In The Creole City: Place, Race And Identity In The Age Of Globalization, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

In this essay I argue that Haitian-American artists Edwidge Danticat and Wyclef Jean employ Carnival symbolism to explore the practices and politics of belonging in "global" cities. While meditating on the cultural and social dynamism produced by transnationalism, they resist the impulse to idealize its effects. In song and nonfictional narrative, they reflect also on the ways that historical and structural violence shape the lives of Haitian migrants in creolized cities.

Introduction: Carnival In The Creole City: Place, Race And Identity In The Age Of Globalization, Cynthia Dobbs, Daphne Lamothe, Theresa Tensuan

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This cluster of "Life Stories from the Creole City" brings together essays that focus on figures negotiating subjectivity within different "creole cities" at specific historical junctures, as these urban spaces become compelling sites for narrating subjectivity in negotiation with forces of globalization, diaspora, and cosmopolitanism. The essays variously illuminate the difficulties and payoffs associated with narrating lives in—and of—porous urban space.

African Americans Respond To Stigmatization: The Meanings And Salience Of Confronting, Deflecting Conflict, Educating The Ignorant And 'Managing The Self', Crystal M. Fleming, Michèle Lamont, Jessica S. Welburn

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

Drawing on interviews with 150 randomly sampled African Americans, we analyse how members of a stigmatized group understand their experience of stigmatization and assess appropriate responses when asked about the best approach to deal with stigmatization and about responses to specific incidents. Combining in-depth interviews with a systematic coding of the data, we make original contributions to the previous literature by identifying the relative salience of modalities and tools for responding. We also examine closely through qualitative data the two most salient modalities of response, 'confronting' and 'deflating' conflict, the most salient tools, teaching out-group members about African Americans, and …

Review: Black Feminist Cultural Criticism By Jacqueline Bobo: Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics By Bell Hooks: Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center By Bell Hooks, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of: Black And White Women's Travel Narratives: Antebellum Explorations By Cheryl J. Fish, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gloria Naylor's Mama Day: Bridging Roots And Routes, Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Everyday Antiracism: Competence And Religion In The Cultural Repertoire Of The African American Elite, Michèle Lamont, Crystal M. Fleming

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued …

Vodou Imagery, African-American Tradition And Cultural Transformation In Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God", Daphne Lamothe

Africana Studies: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.