“Strange What Cosmopolites Music Makes of Us”: Classical Music, the Black Press, and Nora Douglas Holt's Black Feminist Audiotopia

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-336
Author(s):  
LUCY CAPLAN
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Woman ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Chicago Defender

AbstractThis article examines the music criticism of Nora Douglas Holt, an African American woman who wrote a classical music column for the Chicago Defender (1917–1923) and published a monthly magazine, Music and Poetry (1921–1922). I make two claims regarding the force and impact of Holt's ideas. First, by writing about classical music in the black press, Holt advanced a model of embodied listening that rejected racist attempts to keep African Americans out of the concert hall and embraced a communal approach to knowledge production. Second, Holt was a black feminist intellectual who refuted dominant notions of classical music's putative race- and gender-transcending universalism; instead, she acknowledged the generative possibilities of racial difference in general and blackness in particular. I analyze Holt's intellectual commitments by situating her ideas within the context of early twentieth-century black feminist thought; analyzing the principal themes of her writing in the Chicago Defender and Music and Poetry; and assessing her engagement with a single musical work, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36. Ultimately, Holt's criticism offers new insight into how race, gender, and musical activity intersected in the Jim Crow era and invites a more nuanced and capacious understanding of black women's manifold contributions to US musical culture.

A Journey Worth Traveling

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-140
Author(s):  
Pamela E. Scott-Johnson ◽  
Pamela M. Leggett-Robinson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Women ◽  
African American Woman ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
African American Female ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Professional Experiences ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Times

Women of color have historically been underrepresented across the sciences. Neuroscience is no exception. Unfortunately, few studies have examined or shed light on how the dual presence of race and gender affects the educational and professional experiences of African American women in science. This chapter will reflect upon the journey of being an African American woman of science (psychology and neuroscience) in the academy and the blessings not abundantly clear. Through a critical lens, recognizing how the journey would have been more difficult without the supportive network of individual and the critical importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Understanding the context of the times and the need to develop networks that facilitate success of future generations of African American female scholars is crucial.

scholarly journals Teaching as Emotional Practice or Exercise in Measurement? School Structures, Identity Conflict, and the Retention of Black Women Science Teachers

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-618
Author(s):  
Stacy Olitsky
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Science Teachers ◽  
African American Woman ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Identity Conflict ◽  
School Structures ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Retention Of Teachers

To effectively teach historically marginalized groups of students, educators have argued for increasing recruitment and retention of teachers of color. This qualitative study draws on identity theory, exploring the relationship between school structures, self-talk, identity development, and retention of an African American woman science teacher. In this study, the teacher experienced identity conflicts because structures in her school conflicted with her professional identity, shaped by race and gender, as warm and connected. Results from this study indicate that policies that prioritize measurement over relationships can cause contradictions with culturally responsive approaches and the emotional practice of teaching.

Rethinking Spaces of Confinement Through Black Girl Embodiment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique C. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Feminist Organizing ◽  
The Relationship

Carcerality in educational settings tends to focus on the school-to-prison pipeline and other ways that bodies differentially marked by race, gender, and, more recently, sexuality and ability are punished and tracked into the juvenile justice system. The ongoing chain between marginalized bodies and criminality is evident in rates of incarceration based on race and gender specifically. Black lesbian feminist organizing of the late 20th century called attention to the relationship between social identities and carcerality. Expanding on this work, Black feminist scholarship argues that Black womxn and girls are inherently valuable and that liberation is necessary for autonomy. Scholarship, however, illustrates how freedom for Black womxn and girls are directly mediated by systems of race, gender, sexuality, class, as well as by the discourses created to maintain order through institutions such as schools and prisons. Building on the preceding connections between social identities and confinement, Black girls’ specific encounters with high-stakes policies, such as zero-tolerance, and school discipline reveal new textures and distinct qualities of carcerality that expand education’s understanding of carceral spaces and experiences. In a society that presumes Black girls need no protection because their Blackness is feared while their femininity remains unrealized, Black girls’ bodily deliberations and embodied choices are acts of resistance and self-definition.

Existential Crisis of the Japanese American Woman: A Study of Post War Japanese American Fiction

Ensemble ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-56
Author(s):  
Nitusmita Bhattacharyya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
American Woman ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Native Community ◽  
American Women ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War

The Japanese American women, during the Second World War, suffered from subjugation at different levels of their existence. They had been subjected to marginalization based on their sexual identity within their native community. They were further made to experience discrimination on the basis of their racial status while living as a member of the Japanese diaspora in the United States during the War. The objectification and marginalization of the women had led them to the realization of their existence as a non -entity within and outside their community. However, the internment of Japanese Americans followed by the declaration of Executive Order 9066 by President Roosevelt and the consequent experience of living behind the barbed wire fences left them to struggle with questions raised on their claim to existence and their identity within a space where race and gender contested each other. In my research paper, I have made a humble attempt at studying the existential crisis of the Japanese American women in America during the War.

Eddie Anderson, Rochester, and Race in 1930s Radio and Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
Time Part

African-American dancer, singer, comedian Eddie Anderson pursued an entertainment career in California, his opportunities limited by Jim Crow-era racism in Hollywood but also shaped opportunities in night clubs and cabarets that catered to both black and white patrons. Winning an audition for a one-time role on Benny’s radio show, Anderson’s inimitable gravelly voice spurred Benny to create a full time part, the character of Rochester Van Jones, Jack’s butler and valet, in late 1937. Although initially hampered by stereotyped minstrel-show dialogue and character habits, Rochester soon became renowned by both white and black listeners for his ability to criticize the “Boss” in impertinent manner. Virtually co-starred in three films with Benny that were highly successful at the box office, commenters in the black press in 1940 hoped that Rochester offered “a new day” in improved race relations.

The Unspeakable Speculative, Spoken

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-574
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wanzo
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Racial Representations ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Paradigm Shifting

Abstract Exploring various absences—what is or should not be represented in addition to the unspeakable in terms of racial representations—is the through line of three recent books about race and speculative fictions. Mark C. Jerng’s Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction (2018) argues racial worldmaking has been at the center of speculative fictions in the US. In Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination (2017), Kristen Lillvis takes one of the primary thematic concerns of black speculative fictions—the posthuman—and rereads some of the most canonical works in the black feminist literary canon through that lens. Lillvis addresses a traditional problem in the turn to discussions of the posthuman and nonhuman, namely, what does it mean to rethink black people’s humanity when they have traditionally been categorized as nonhuman? Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (2018) speaks to the absence of a framework of disability in African American literature and cultural criticism. In addressing absence—or, perhaps silence—Schalk offers the most paradigm-shifting challenge to what is speakable and unspeakable: the problem of linking blackness with disability and how to reframe our treatment of these categories.

A matter of race and gender: An examination of an undergraduate music program through the lens of feminist pedagogy and Black feminist pedagogy

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Paula A Grissom-Broughton
Keyword(s):  
Course Design ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Black College ◽  
Instructional Approach ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Music Program ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Feminist Pedagogy

Feminist pedagogy, originating in social constructivism and critical theory, offers an instructional approach for a more democratic and diverse curriculum and pedagogy. Extending from feminist pedagogy is Black feminist pedagogy, which offers a more specialized instructional approach for underrepresented populations in education. Both feminist pedagogy and Black feminist pedagogy foster a unique intersection for institutions of higher education whose historic mission integrates race and gender as part of its targeted efforts. This study examines ways feminist pedagogy and Black feminist pedagogy are integrated into the undergraduate music program at Spelman College, a historically Black college for women. Using Barbara Coeyman’s four principles of traditional feminist pedagogy for women’s studies in music and the general music curriculum (i.e., diversity, opportunities for all voices, shared responsibility, and orientation to action) as a theoretical framework, the following three components were examined for this study: content (curriculum and course design), context (structural influences of gender and race), and pedagogy (classroom instruction and learning outcomes). The analysis of data ascertained through triangulated measures of interviews, observations, and document collection provided suggestions as to how music educators can design and teach within a music environment that is socially and culturally inclusive for all students.

African American Women Chemists

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
African American Men ◽  
African American Woman ◽  
American Woman ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
American Women ◽  
Race And Gender

Dr. Marie Maynard Daly received her PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University in 1947. Although she was hardly the first of her race and gender to engage in the field, she was the first African American woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in the United States. In this book, Jeannette Brown, an African American woman chemist herself, will present a wide-ranging historical introduction to the relatively new presence of African American women in the field of chemistry. It will detail their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women. The book contains sketches of the lives of African America women chemists from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960's when the Civil Rights Acts were passed and greater career opportunities began to emerge. In each sketch, Brown will explore women's motivation to study the field and detail their often quite significant accomplishments. Chapters focus on chemists in academia, industry, and government, as well as chemical engineers, whose career path is very different from that of the tradition chemist. The book concludes with a chapter on the future of African American women chemists, which will be of interest to all women interested in science.

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