Teaching African American Women’s Literature in Australia: Reading Toni Morrison in the Deep North

2010 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Carole Ferrier
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Women's Literature

Channelling the dead: A conversation on Desdemona with Tina Benko

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
York City ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Character Building

Tina Benko is an American stage, screen and television actress who has steadily trodden the Broadway boards for twenty years while starring in films and TV series and teaching acting and movement in New York City. An intensely focused and versatile performer, Benko has played in a broad variety of genres, ranging from screwball and Shakespearean comedies to realistic Russian, Scandinavian and American plays. In this interview, she discusses the factors that attracted her to drama and theatre, her acting training and approach to character-building, and theatre as a space for healing and reconciliation as she experienced it while working in Desdemona (2012), a cross-cultural theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello staged by American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars, with texts by African American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, and music and lyrics by Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré.

scholarly journals Theorizing Black Power Movement in African American Literature: An Analysis of Morrison's Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Fayaz Ahmad Kumar ◽  
Colette Morrow
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Power ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Black Aesthetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Author

This paper analyzes the influence of the Black Power movement on the AfricanAmerican literary productions; especially in the fictional works of Toni Morrison. As an African-American author, Toni Morrison presents the idea of 'Africanness' in her novels. Morrison's fiction comments on the fluid bond amongst the African-American community, the Black Power and Black Aesthetics. The works of Morrison focus on various critical points in the history of African-Americans, her fiction recalls not only the memory of Africa but also contemplates the contemporary issues. Morrison situates the power politics within the framework of literature by presenting the history of the African-American cultures.

“I Know I Can’t Change the Future, But I Can Change the Past”: Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and the Classical Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Grace McGowan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Generation

Abstract “A central figure in transnational intellectual history” (Roynon, 2013), Toni Morrison’s oeuvre has helped deconstruct the triangulated relationship between a European Graeco-Roman classical tradition, Africa, and America. Morrison’s deconstruction of the classical past and its aesthetics have laid the foundation for the reconstructive work of a new generation of writers, including Robin Coste Lewis. Both writers renegotiate and reclaim a classical aesthetic by recovering its African roots and situating it in an African American context. In addition, the article (1) examines the role of a classical aesthetic in beauty discourse and Robin Coste Lewis’s re-vision of the black female body and (2) addresses what this means for canonicity, linking Lewis’s ambivalence about reclaiming a classical aesthetic to Morrison’s ambivalence in “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” (1987).

scholarly journals The Experience of Alienation in Toni Morrison’s Work: Man’s Fragmentation and Concomitant Distortion

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Mohammed Mahameed ◽  
Majed Abdul Karim
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Work

The question of alienation has always been a pervasive theme in the history of modern thought, and it occupies a considerable place in contemporary work. Literature in general, and fiction in particular, raise this issue to reveal its influence on human beings and communities. Novelists have been trying to unravel its complexities and concomitant consequences. The paper aims to explore the experience of alienation through depicting the issue not as a purely racial reality, or something restricted to the colour of the skin or gender of the victim. It is rather presented as a distressing state which cripples the victims and makes them susceptible captives of the dominant forces. In the selected novels, Toni Morrison has delved deep into the experience of alienation through her male and female characters, showing the different forms of this experience. The present research investigates Morrison’s portrayal of the issue from an African-American prospect. References will be made to novels such as Tar Baby, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.

African American Scholars and the Margins of DH

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Howard Rambsy II
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Marginal Status ◽  
The Way

Let's Cut to the Chase: African American Scholars Occupy the Margins of this Expansive Realm Known as Digital Humanities. Do well-intentioned people want more diversity in DH? Sure, they do. Do black folks participate in DH? Of course, we do. But we've witnessed far too many DH panels with no African American participants or with only one. We've paid close attention to where the major funding for DH goes. Or, we've carefully taken note of who the authors of DH-related articles, books, and bibliographies are. We've studied these things closely enough to realize who resides in prime DH real estate and who doesn't. We could speak defiantly about our marginal status the way Toni Morrison once did when she quipped, “I'm gonna stay out here on the margin, and let the center look for me” (87). Yaasss!At the same time, though, it's worth thinking about some of the reasons why African American scholars dwell on the margins of the DH field. The processes by which we pursue graduate study and become participants in the field of African American literary studies account for why we are slow or reluctant to embrace DH. There's also the matter of segregation—our persistent exclusion from projects and opportunities that are ostensibly open to all but invariably involve primarily white scholars. Immersion in the field of African American literary studies and conversations with senior and emergent scholars reveal some of the reasons why we stand so far from the center of the DH community.

scholarly journals TRANSITION IN TONI MORRISON’S “CONSOLATA” FROM PARADISE (1997)

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalía Villa Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Female Community ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
And Gender

In her novel Paradise (1997), Toni Morrison portrays one of her main characters, Consolata or “disconsolate”, through a constant journey in search for her African American identity as a complete woman. This journey engulfs Consolata in an eternal fluctuation between hope and hopelessness, which results from being caught up in the so-called liminal/diaspora space in hybridity (Bhabha, 1994; Brah, 1996).The present paper deals with location of culture and gender identity in the marginal, unhomely spaces between dominant social formations by analysing chapter 7 “Consolata”. Consolata may be seen as an illustrative example of the black female community struggling to overcome the hurdles of being victimised as hybrid diasporic women in a patriarchal archaic western [black] culture.

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