scholarly journals The masque of Blackness: Or, performing assimilation in the white academe

Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadhvi Dar

‘Diversity’ is a dangerous misnomer in the white academe because the idea fails to recognize the politics of Whiteness that structure a spectrum of assimilation academics of colour are positioned by. Taking the title and plotline from the Jacobean masque written by Ben Jonson in 1605, this revisionist play sets out to consider the politics of assimilation academics of colour perform in their daily lives. Drawing on Black liberation and anti-racist literature, the play draws attention to how Black and Brown bodies that are asked to perform and use voice daringly or silence instrumentally to leverage degrees of assimilation into white structures. The play first, questions the ontology of foreignness by reflecting on the colonized history of the Black body becoming assimilated into Whiteness, and second, it provides a counter-narrative to those who experience perpetual exclusion and racism at work while other academics of colour seem to become accepted and even celebrated by white hierarchies.

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-217
Author(s):  
Lisa C. Robertson

This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of British historiographical writing about India that begins with James Mill’s History of British India (1817), the chapter argues that her work during this period consciously eschews conventional historical methodology and offers an important counter-narrative to colonial history. It suggests that in her attention to the ways that social movements and political institutions shape people’s daily lives, which is set within a broad foundation of personal knowledge, Harkness’s writing engages more ardently with the conventions of cultural history than it does with those of travel writing.


Author(s):  
Courtney R. Baker

In the history of black America, the image of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body has long been looked at by others from a safe distance. This book questions the relationship between the spectator and victim and urges viewers to move beyond the safety of the “gaze” to cultivate a capacity for humane insight toward representations of human suffering. Utilizing the visual studies concept termed the “look,” the book interrogates how the notion of black humanity was articulated and recognized in oft-referenced moments within the African American experience: the graphic brutality of the 1834 Lalaurie affair; the photographic exhibition of lynching, Without Sanctuary; Emmett Till's murder and funeral; and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Contemplating these and other episodes, the book traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity used the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice. An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, the book asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Matthew B. Platt

This paper examines how black members of Congress (MCs) have recognized police brutality as an issue on the congressional agenda from 1973 to 2016. Using a dataset of every bill introduced by black members of Congress during the period of study, I show that, in general, police brutality has not been an important component of black MCs’ legislative portfolios. Instead, it is an occasional focus of bill sponsorship in response to discrete, highly salient incidents of brutality and murder. These findings are contextualized through a broader discussion of black representation as a tactic for black liberation and the similarities between the history of anti-lynching legislation and the contemporary fight against police brutality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Bartoszko

This article offers a counter narrative to the current ethnographic studies on treatment with buprenorphine, in which notions of promised and experienced normality dominate. In some countries, introduction of buprenorphine led to a perceived “normalisation” of opioid substitution treatment, and this new modality was well received. However, in Norway the response has been almost the opposite: patients have reacted with feelings of disenfranchisement, failure, and mistrust. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway, this article offers comparative insight into local experiences and subjectivities in the context of the globalisation of buprenorphine. By outlining the ethnographic description of the pharmaceutical atmosphere of forced transfers to buprenorphine-naloxone, I show that the social history of the medication is as significant as its pharmacological qualities for various treatment effects. An analysis of the reactions to this treatment modality highlights the reciprocal shaping of lived experiences and institutional forces surrounding pharmaceutical use in general and opioids in particular.


PMLA ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Ejner J. Jensen ◽  
L. A. Beaurline

Scholarship, like most human activities, has its fashions. One mode very much in the ascendant at the moment is that which concerns itself with the relation between literary forms and other intellectual structures in a given era ; its method might be described as a combination of the history of ideas with a sort of formalism. L. A. Beaurline's recent article on Ben Jonson, in its design and strategy, illustrates this approach.1 The overall design of such a paper may be indicated as follows: the scholar describes a concept for which he claims wide intellectual acceptance; next, he shows how this concept may be traced in certain literary works. After this initial demonstration, his strategy consists primarily of moving between specific works of literature and other manifestations of the concept to show how each class illuminates the other and how each substantiates the other's status. The end of all this activity is not merely increased understanding of the temper of an age, nor is it merely a clearer view of the works under discussion; ideally, it is both.


2021 ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Bartosz Kułan

The article presents the history of the children’s republic founded by William Ruben George (1866–1936). The first part of the article focuses on familiarising readers with the figure of William Ruben George – the founder of the George Junior Republic. This figure and his activities have not been known in the Polish scientific discourse so far. The following sections discuss the general characteristics of the fight against juvenile delinquency in the United States and the reasons for the creation of the George Junior Republic. The next part focuses on the governance system in the George Junior Republic and the daily lives of the pupils.


2018 ◽  
pp. 51-82
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew

This chapter argues that lead poisoning acted as a metonym of a general social imaginary of crisis associated with the collapse of the neoliberal model while also being rooted in the legacies of the mid-twentieth-century Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) period. The chapter counters Uruguay’s modern foundational myths of “exceptionalism” with social imaginaries anchored in the militant working-class history of La Teja. The chapter critically examines these foundational myths in relation to the all-encompassing socioeconomic crisis that began in 2002, arguing that activists interpreted the lead-poisoning epidemic within the working-class counter-narrative of Uruguayan national identity and history, politics and society, and in dialogue with a counter-imaginary of crisis linked to the material and symbolic fallout of the neoliberal order.


Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors

This chapter examines the strained history of Jackson State University during the aftermath of World War II and leading up to the modern civil rights movement. Located in the heart of Mississippi, Jackson State students carved out space to express their militancy as the war came to a close. However, they quickly felt that space collapse around them as segregationists tightened their grip on the Magnolia State as the burgeoning movement for black liberation challenged the oppressive traditions of the most socially and politically closed state in the country. Administrators such as Jackson State University president Jacob Reddix quickly fell in line with the expectations of his immediate supervisors and squared off against outspoken scholar-activists such as famed poet and novelist Margaret Walker. The standoff resulted in a campus environment fraught with tension yet still producing students and faculty determined to undermine Jim Crow.


Author(s):  
Ying-shih Yü

This essay examines how the most notable Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming (1472-1529) re-oriented his Confucian project in the context of Ming despotism. It argues that Confucianism took a decidedly new turn in the sixteenth century and that Wang Yangming was at the center of this development from the sixteenth century to the early decades of the eighteenth. Details how Wang shifted the earlier central role of Confucian intellectuals in implementing reforms under the imperial support to enlightening the ordinary Chinese people, specifically including the merchant class, that they could realize the Dao or the Moral Way in their daily lives. This shift not only led to a new era of social and political thinking in the history of Confucianism, but also to the rise of the merchant class to unprecedented social and cultural prominence in the 16th century.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document