Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema, Book Review, Peter Catapano

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Who Tells Our Story: Intersectional Temporalities In Hamilton, An American Musical, Andie Silva, Shereen Inayatulla

Publications and Research

This article examines the ways in which Hamilton: An American Musical can be read less as a historical account and more as a prediction of a future immigrant, who is called upon to (re)define US nationhood. Keeping with the tempo of the musical as well as the broader issues of time, space, and identity it attempts to address, this article is presented as a dialogical rap. The co-authors’ discussion frames Hamilton as an example of the power of unplottable, time-arresting immigrant bodies, to whom the colonial imposition of linear history does not apply. From this framework, the authors’ conversation shifts …

Fauve Masks: Rethinking Modern 'Primitivist' Uses Of African And Oceanic Art, 1905-8, Joshua I. Cohen

Publications and Research

Fauve painters “discovered” African and Oceanic sculpture beginning in 1905. From that time, Vlaminck first collected African art; Derain studied Oceanic works at the British Museum in spring 1906; and Matisse struggled to paint a Kongo-Vili statuette he purchased in fall 1906. Fauve interests in shallow-relief, relatively naturalistic, and surface-ornamented sculptural works suggest conformity with turn-of-the-century artistic and scientific ideas conflating heterogeneous strains of so-called “primitive” material culture. Nevertheless, the dominant conceptual framework of “primitivism” has tended to limit art-historical understandings of external formal influences on modernism, which can be gleaned here by investigating the particular objects the Fauves appropriated.

Harlem Hospital's Journey To Patient Navigation, Christine W. Thorpe

Publications and Research

This essay discusses the history of 20th century black migration to Harlem, New York and the utilization of Harlem Hospital. This examination is based on New York newspaper articles in the 1920’s. They tell the story, from a journalist’s perspective, of the challenges African Americans experienced in their interactions with Harlem Hospital. The implicit communication of segregation of Harlem Hospital at that time is connected to the development of patient navigation in the 1970’s. The creation of patient navigation will be discussed in the context of historical health disparities that are increasingly manifested today.

Gubernamentalidad Espacial Y Agencia Criminal Negra En Cali Y São Paulo: Aproximaciones Para Una Antropología 'Fuera De La Ley.', Jaime Alves

Publications and Research

En los últimos años realicé visitas semanales a la cárcel, participado en reuniones mensuales de rendición de cuentas de la policía comunitária, “parchado” con los pandilleros en las “ollas”, entrevistado a las madres de los jóvenes negros asesinados por la policía o por otros jóvenes en las guerras sin fin entre pandillas. A lo largo de mi experiencia etnográfica, he tenido la “oportunidad” de escuchar varios relatos de horror, como por ejemplo las prácticas de “Los Matadores”, el escuadrón de la muerte compuesto por policías en la zona sur de São Paulo. Tal como lo he señalado en trabajo anterior, …

Toward The Anthropology Of White Nationalist Postracialism: Comments Inspired By Hall, Goldstein, And Ingram’S “The Hands Of Donald Trump”, Jeff Maskovsky

Publications and Research

This article explains Donald Trump’s brutal political effectiveness in terms of his white nationalist appeal. It locates the intellectual, popular, and policy imperatives of Trumpism in a new form of racial politics that I am calling white nationalist postracialism. This is a paradoxical politics of twenty-first-century white racial resentment whose proponents seek to do two contradictory things: to reclaim the nation for white Americans while also denying an ideological investment in white supremacy. The article shows how Trump’s excoriation of political correctness, his nostalgia for the post–WWII industrial economy, his use of hand gestures, and his public speaking about race …

Lyric X-Marks: Genre And Self-Determination In The Harp Poems Of John Rollin Ridge, R. Arvo Carr

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Anti-Imperialism Of Ottobah Cugoano: Slavery, Abolition, And Colonialism In Thoughts And Sentiments On The Evil Of Slavery, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article argues that the work of Ottobah Cugoano provides readers with a robust anti-imperial analysis of European modernity. For Cugoano, slavery and colonialism are coeval and mutually constitutive processes. I argue that Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery which has been accepted as a tract of radical abolitionism should also be interpreted as an anti-imperial text. I contend that we must attend to the global scope of Cugoano’s anti-imperialism which includes critiques of European colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as provides recommendations for radical changes in the relationship between Europe and …

Sexual Violence As The Language Of Border Control: Protecting Exceptional Difference, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

When I first arrived in the Paris region in 1999 to do research on the struggle by undocumented immigrants (les sans papiers) for basic human rights, discussions of violence against women were remarkably absent from the public arena. Nongovernmental organizations and researchers had begun to broach the topic, but with little public visibility. However, this changed in late 2000, with a media explosion on the issue of les tournantes, or the gang rapes committed in the banlieues of Paris. Such tournantes involve boys »taking turns« with their friends’ girlfriends, both parties usually being of Maghrebian or North …

Agitando Lo Cotidiano. Una Conversación Sobre El Desafío Ⓐnarquista Frente Al Sexismo En El Lenguaje, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua. Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use …

Urban Chinatowns In Europe: With Cases In London And Paris, Wendy W. Tan

Publications and Research

The author examines, based on personal perspectives, London Chinatown and Paris Chinatowns from aspects in historical origin, status quo, boundary, public transportation, Chinese population, satellite Chinatown, Chinatown arch, business, and social pathology

Rethinking Greece: Despina Lalaki On Hellenism, State-Building, Archaeology And The "Democratic West", Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Jam On The Vine By Lashonda Barnett, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Book review of Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Barnett from the perspective of a lesbian and lesbian of color audience of readers.

Shakespeare's Blush, Or "The Animal" In Othello, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

This essay examines how the rhetoric of animalization in Shakespeare’s Othello compels us to think early modern categories of race in connection with early modern discourses of “human” versus “animal.” Beginning with Shakespeare’s representation of Iago, I suggest that it is the potential for sameness conditioned by Iago’s counterfactual statement (“Were I the Moor, I would not by Iago”) that is most significant about his relation to Othello. From there I consider the overlap between the play’s representations of animality and black skin. Read in the context of Jacques Derrida’s reflections on animals, I consider the deconstructive value of linking …

Japanese American Internment (Encyclopedia Entry), Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Entries: "Lgbtq Asian Americans" & "George Takei", Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

Encyclopedia entries on "LGBTQ Asian Americans" & "George Takei" pages 491-498. Originally published in: Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms. Edited by Lan Dong. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. March 2016. Copyright© 2016 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Inclusion in this institutional repository is permitted by the publisher's contract: "Publisher grants to …

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Loving The Unlovable Body In Lois Ann Yamanaka’S Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by explicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …

"Antony Santos." Dictionary Of Caribbean And Afro-Latin American Biography, Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And Franklin K. Knight. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016., Nelson Santana

Publications and Research

This work provides an abridged biographical sketch of one of the most prolific Dominican artists from the Dominican Republic, bachata legend Antony Santos.

"Alexander 'Alex' Emmanuel Rodriguez." Dictionary Of Caribbean And Afro-Latin American Biography, Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And Franklin K. Knight. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016., Nelson Santana

Publications and Research

This work provides an abridged biographical sketch of one of the greatest hitters in Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod).

Afroreggae And Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae: A Study Of The Early Years, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

The following study of AfroReggae and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) calls attention to Brazilian presence and community organizing in the field of Hip Hop studies with a long memory framework: placing AfroReggae and GCAR in a long history of Africana resistance through music in Latin America. !990s GCAR group arises when reggae and Hip Hop music had become new global forms of solidarity among urban marginalized youths worldwide, making use of old and new strategies of social healing (Fernandes 2011). A close look at lyrics from the Hip Hop fusion band and the associated nonprofit organization shape the concepts …

Queering Sugar: Kara Walker’S Sugar Sphinx And The Intractability Of Black Female Sexuality, Amber Jamilla Musser

Publications and Research

This essay analyzes the controversy surrounding artist Kara Walker’s 2014 installation, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, to unpack the pleasures and dangers that subtend discussions of black female sexuality. What Walker announced as a tribute to the labor of brown and black bodies produced myriad conversations about pleasure, danger, and black female sexuality. Most art critics argued that the piece reclaimed black female agency; many visitors criticized the work (and the public response to it) as disrespectful and problematic. In the essay, I argue that both of these responses highlight the difficulty of talking about black female …

Becoming American: Constructing Mexican Immigrants In Local Newspapers, Zheng Zhu

Publications and Research

Media representation of Latino immigrants has been extensively studied by scholars across diverse academic disciplines. Particular to the U.S. context, preceding scholarships pertaining to the ways in which Latinos were represented centered on the media representation of Latino immigrants either as the exotic racial other or undesirable foreigners. In light of the important role that the Mexican immigrants played in understanding the current national debate on illegal immigration and the overall historical experiences of immigrants in Washington State (WA), this study critically investigated how news articles published in WA represented Mexican immigrants. As a crucial point of departure from prior …

Introduction: The 1970s, Shelly J. Eversley, Michelle Habell-Pallán

Publications and Research

Introduction to special issue, "The 1970s," of WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), edited by Shelly Eversley and Michelle Habell-Pallán.

Primitive At The Plantation's Edge, Robert F. Reid-Pharr

Publications and Research

There comes a time when the only thing that one can do is admit defeat. Standing at the tail end of a Black Studies movement established as part of the articulation of anti-segregationist, anti-colonialist African and African American political and cultural insurgencies, one is made painfully aware of a sort of necessary and inevitable social and professional marginalization structuring the everyday existence of the so-called black scholar. The broadly imagined ethical outlines of even the most valued projects of black intellectualism continue as ornamental, overly moralistic, never quite fully valid aspects of the industry / government / education complex that …

Utopias Misplaced: The Cost Of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics To North Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I'm sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the "uncanny body politic," the uncanny valley, "dystopian poetics," what it means to outsource dystopian poetics, the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Authors/artists mentioned include: Thomas Hobbes, Mary Shelley, David Mitchell, Marjane Satrapi, Song Byeok, Sun Mu, Masahiro Mori, Andy Warhol. The talk also discusses the James Bond film Die Another Day.

The Ideological And Organizational Origins Of The United Federation Of Teachers' Opposition To The Community Control Movement In The New York City Public Schools, 1960-1968, Stephen Brier

Publications and Research

This article explores the origins and ideological practice of public school teacher unionism as it was articulated and revealed in New York City before and during the epochal strike against an experiment in community control of neighborhood schools undertaken by the United Federation of Teachers in the fall of 1968 that closed down the city’s massive public school system for weeks and put almost 1 million school children in the street. How and why did unionized New York City public school teachers support the particular kind of trade unionism that the UFT and its president, Albert Shanker, embodied and practiced …

Opening Remarks To Outing Lorraine At The Schomburg Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This article is an edit of the opening remarks for the event held on May 22nd, 2014 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the In The Life Series supplying Black LGBT programming coordinated by Steven Fullwood. Outing Lorraine included panelists: Alexis DeVeaux, Joi Gresham, and Steven Fullwood and was moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. Opening remarks provide a biographical description of Lorraine Hansberry's life, prepare the audience for a conversation on the implications for "outing" a black iconic figure, details the purpose for use of primary and secondary sources when, and provides a bibliography for …

El Pasado Lingüístico Colonial Y Las Lenguas De Instrucción En La Educación Filipina, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Hair It Is: Examining The Experiences Of Black Women With Natural Hair, Tabora A. Johnson, Teiahsha Bankhead

Publications and Research

Who am I and how do I feel about who I am, are essential questions that help define and construct identity. For Black women and girls, identity is inextricably linked to their relationship to and presentation of their hair. Our research presents findings from an Internet based survey con- ducted with 529 Black women exploring their experiences when wearing their hair in its natural state (not thermally or chemically straightened). These are preliminary findings from the study with reference to the composition of the study participants and how they responded to key ques- tions related to how they perceived when …