A Space of Negotiation: Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s Photographic Portraits as a Reflection on the Image of Blackness and Nudity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Stachura
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Black Queer

This article focuses on the self-portraits of contemporary African American artist Paul Mpaga Sepuya, who specializes in studio photography. In his self-portraits, Sepuya raises the issue of the contemporary representation of the black queer subject caught up in interracial relations. The author analyzes how the photographer blurs the boundary between the subjective "I" and "we," presenting a creative collective where the model-artist, artist-model relationship is defined on the basis of feelings of love and friendship. The author discusses issues of the homoerotic act and the hyper-visibility and invisibility of the racially determined subject.

scholarly journals Beyoncé’s Slay Trick: The Performance of Black Camp and its Intersectional Politics

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 406-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Black Female ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Black Queer

Abstract This article pays attention to African-American artist Beyonce Knowles and her performance of black camp. Beyonce’s stage persona and performances invite multiple ideological readings as to what pertains to her interpretation of gender, sexuality, and race. While cultural theory around the icon of Beyonce has focused on her feminist and racial politics as well as her politicization of the black female body, a queer reading applied from the perspective of camp performance will concentrate on the artist’s queer appeal and, most importantly, on her exposition of black camp, an intersection of feminist, racial and queer poetics. By examining video and live performances, the scope of this article is to underline those queer nuances inherent in Beyonce’s dramatisation of black femininity and the cultural pool she draws from for its effective staging. More specifically, since Beyonce plays with tropes and themes that are common in camp culture, her performance relies on a meta-camping effect that interacts with African-American queer culture. This article, thus, traces black queer traditions and discourses in the artist’s praxis of black camp.

scholarly journals Like Mother, Like Daughter?: Matrilineal Opposition in African American Mulatta Melodrama

2017 ◽  
pp. 165-192
Author(s):  
Anna Pochmara
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The Self ◽  
White Female ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mothers And Daughters ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of

The article juxtaposes representations of mothers and daughters in selected African American novels that feature near-white female protagonists: W. W. Brown’s Clotel, Or the President’s Daughter (1853), Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892), Charles Chesnutt’s The House behind the Cedars (1900), and Pauline Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1902). It explores the matrilineal opposition through a formalist close analysis of the melodramatic poetics of the texts and examines the political significance of such aesthetic choices. The novels expose the American history of interracial relations through their foregrounding of the mulatta protagonists and numerous scenes of anagnorisis of their multiracial identities. Simultaneously, their “erotics of politics” rewards the choice of a black spouse and thus celebrates the emergence of the self-determined black community.

Examining the Self-Reported Sexual Behaviors of African American Adolescents

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhonda Lewis-Moss ◽  
Chakema Carmack ◽  
Jamilia Sly ◽  
Shani Roberts
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
African American Adolescents ◽  
The Self

Nuanced and Dissenting Voices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
African American Parents ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Bakhtinian Theory

Chapter 4, “Nuanced and Dissenting Voices,” examines the nuances diverse parents brought to their understandings of childrearing and self-esteem. Framed within Bakhtinian theory, this chapter gives voice to African American parents, working-class parents, conservative Christian parents, and mothers, particularly women who had experienced low self-esteem. These parents endorsed self-esteem, but refracted the language of the self-esteem imaginary in ways that made sense, given their diverse values and ideological commitments, social positioning, and idiosyncratic experiences. This chapter also describes the perspectives of two groups from the larger study who challenged key elements of the dominant discourse: grandmothers of Centerville children who raised their children in an earlier era, and Taiwanese parents who grew up in a different cultural context but were temporarily residing and raising their children in Centerville. These two groups of dissenters underscore again the book’s theme that self-esteem is rooted in time and place.

Exploring Psychosocial Task Resolution and Self-Concept among African-American Adolescents

1996 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 803-810
Author(s):  
Craig C. Brookins
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
African American Adolescents ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Developmental Task ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
Highly Correlated

Developmental task resolution and self-concept of adolescents were examined for a sample of 110 African-American youth. The Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory was used to measure Erikson's stages of psychological development and the Bronstein-Cruz Child/Adolescent Self-concept and Adjustment Scale was used to measure multiple components of the self-concept. Scores for Self-concept and Resolution of Identity stages were highly correlated although scores on Resolution of Identity, commonly seen as the primary psychosocial task of adolescence, were not related to scores on either Emotional Well-being or Family Relations. The results are discussed in terms of improving understanding of relationships between processes in development, identity, and other salient psychosocial variables.

African American Queer Cinema

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Evans
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Queer Cinema ◽  
Hiv Epidemic ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Color Purple

African American queer cinema was born as a reaction to the AIDS/HIV epidemic as well as the blatant homophobia that existed within the Black community in the 1980s. It began with the pioneering works of queer directors Isaac Julien and Marlon Riggs and continued during the new queer cinema movement in the 1990s, particularly including the works of lesbian queer director Cheryl Dunye. However, these works were infinitesimal compared to the queer works featuring primarily White lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) protagonists during that time. That trend continues today as evidenced by looking at the highest-grossing LGBTQ films of all times: very few included any African American characters in significant roles. However, from the 1980s to the 2020s, there have been a few Black queer films that have penetrated the mainstream market and received critical acclaim, such as The Color Purple (Spielberg, 1982), Set It Off (Gary, 1996), and Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture. The documentary film genre has been the most influential in exposing audiences to the experiences and voices within the African American queer communities. Since many of these films are not available for viewing at mainstream theaters, Black queer cinema is primarily accessed via various cable, video streaming, and on-demand services, like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO.

The Rise of the Trio

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-144
Author(s):  
Will Friedwald
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Artist

This chapter looks at the musical output of the King Cole Trio in the peak years of 1943 to 1946 and breaks down the different kinds of songs they favored. Although they were first famous for jivey novelty songs like “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” they also played a large number of classic songs from what would later be called the Great American Songbook, and even at the beginning, Nat was featuring more and more ballads in the Trio’s musical makeup. Also, he was cultivating a network of songwriters who were giving him first crack at their wares. By the end of the war, Nat King Cole had risen as high as any African American artist ever had before him, and yet it was only the beginning.

Plantation comic modes

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Tynes Cowan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Self ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Plantation Life ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
Big House ◽  
American Humor

AbstractThis essay attempts to synthesize disparate sources regarding African-American humor in the antebellum South into a comprehensive view of comic modes on the plantation. In part, the essay addresses the question of slave compliance with white demands that the slave be funny on demand. Such compliance provided slaveholders with evidence that their slaves were not only content in their social position but also happy. I try to navigate through the various arguments related to the Sambo stereotype by examining slave humor in various realms of the plantation: from the big house to the quarter to the field; and from everyday interaction to special occasions such as the annual corn shucking festival. By identifying various domains of plantation life, each with its own particular mode of humor, I am able to draw a picture of the role humor played in negotiation identities on the plantation. These negotiations allowed both white and black members of the plantation community to create and maintain images of the Self.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document