Introduction: Deferred Dreams, Defiant Struggles

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Violet Showers Johnson ◽  
Gundolf Graml ◽  
Patricia Williams Lessane
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
First Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
Freedom Struggles

Offers a brief international history of black oppression, exploitation and misrepresentation. The significant gains born out of the freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s are noted and reflected upon in the context of the persistent injustices and discrimination experienced by African-descended peoples around the world today. Parallels are drawn between the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech and the rise of right-wing populism across Europe in the early twenty-first century. The recent police killings of African-Americans are discussed in order to highlight the continuation of the black struggle in a post-civil rights USA. A broad overview of the contents of volume is then provided. Subjects and themes outlined range from the dynamics of the struggle against racism in a transnational context, to the disruption of socially constructed discourses on blackness via artistic and religious performativity, and the lesser known struggles of the Civil Rights Movement.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Kim T. Gallon
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
News Media ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
Sex Scandals ◽  
African American Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post Civil Rights

The epilogue briefly recounts the history of African American sexuality in the Black Press during the interwar years. The concluding chapter also briefly discusses the Black Press’s coverage and representations of sexuality during World War II through the Civil Rights Movement. National attention on African Americans’ struggles for civil rights inspired black newspapers to strike a more staid approach to covering news. Sex scandals, lurid crime stories, and homosexuality did not fit the picture of “respectable negroes” deserving of full citizenship. In the post-civil rights era, black newspaper circulation took a precipitous fall. Finally, the closing chapter offers a way to think about contemporary black news media by suggesting that discussions of sexuality have migrated to social media spaces such as Facebook and Twitter.

Brexit Dreams

2018 ◽  
pp. 454-469
Author(s):  
Bridget Escolme
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Right Wing Populism

This essay considers some of the cultural and political drives underpinning the production of Shakespeare’s comedies, particularly Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With a focus on configurations of the nostalgic and the critical in performance, I consider the purpose of performing 400-year-old comedies now, at a time when British and American Shakespeare production companies continue to be optimistic about the role of Shakespeare in culture and education, but when these cultures—at least as they feature in the mainstream media—appear never more divided. What kind of comedy is needed at this fraught or divisive time, in the second decade of the twenty-first century? As media-styled ‘liberal elites’ mourn for progressive politics whilst right-wing ‘populism’ indulges its nostalgia for an imagined migrant-free nationhood, Escolme examines the part that Shakespeare production plays in reflecting and constructing cultural nostalgia.

We Are What We Were

White Balance ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 126-162
Author(s):  
Justin Gomer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
Freedom Struggles ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter explores a spate of civil rights and slavery dramas produced in the late 1980s and 1990s—most notably Glory (1989), The Long Walk Home (1990), Forrest Gump (1994), and Amistad (1997)—against the evolution of the Reagan administration’s position on the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. It aims to deepen our understanding of movies commonly labeled “white savior” films. White savior critiques often miss the deep historical context and intricate role Hollywood has played in anti–civil rights maneuverings. Beginning in the latter half of the 1980s, both Reagan and the movies frequently represented civil rights and abolition as driven by a colorblind white ethos. For Reagan, the efficacy of this position was clear; for Hollywood, perhaps less so. Yet together, the reimagination of colorblind black freedom struggles by both factions proved integral to the growing influence of colorblindness, which had become and would continue to be the driving force behind the dismantling of key civil rights programs in the post–civil rights era. As colorblindness became increasingly influential, Hollywood performed the vital task of reimagining an American past in which colorblind white heroes were at the center and colorblindness was responsible for the abolition of slavery and the victories of the civil rights movement. Together, Reagan and Hollywood’s dramatizations of black freedom struggles in the late 1980s and 1990s positioned colorblindness as an enduring quality of American whiteness and insisted that colorblind logic should inform the country’s legislative future.

Not as It Is Written

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Benjamin Houston
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Made In

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

James Baldwin

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American History ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
First Century ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Twenty First Century

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.

Power in Russia: Modus Vivendi and Artis Imago

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatyana Zlotnikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art Criticism ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Theoretical Substantiation ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
History Of ◽  
Creative Experience ◽  
History Of Culture

Contemporary Russian socio-cultural, cultural and philosophical, socio psychological, artistic and aesthetic practices actualize the Russian tradition of rejection, criticism, undisguised hatred and fear of power. Today, however, power has ceased to be a subject of one-dimensional denial or condemnation, becoming the subject of an interdisciplinary scientific discourse that integrates cultural studies, philosophy, social psychology, semiotics, art criticism and history (history of culture). The article provides theoretical substantiation and empirical support for the two facets of notions of power. The first facet is the unique, not only political, but also mental determinant of the problem of power in Russia, a kind of reflection of modus vivendi. The second facet is the artistic and image-based determinant of problem of power in Russia designated as artis imago. Theoretical grounds for solving these problems are found in F. Nietzsche’s perceptions of the binary “potentate-mass” opposition, G. Le Bon’s of the “leader”, K.-G. Jung’s of mechanisms of human motivation for power. The paper dwells on the “semiosis of power” in the focus of thoughts by A. F. Losev, P. A. Sorokin, R. Barthes. Based on S. Freud’s views of the unconscious and G. V. Plekhanov’s and J. Maritain’s views of the totalitarian power, we substantiate the concept of “the imperial unconscious”. The paper focuses on the importance of the freedom motif in art (D. Diderot and V. G. Belinsky as theorists, S. Y. Yursky as an art practitioner). Power as a subject of influence and object of analysis by Russian creators is studied on the material of perceptions and creative experience of A. S. Pushkin (in the context of works devoted to Russian “impostors” by numerous authors). Special attention is paid to the early twenty-first century television series on Soviet rulers (Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Furtseva). The conclusion is made on the relevance of Pushkin’s remark about “living power” “hated by the rabble” for contemporary Russia.

Doing Things with Legal History

2018 ◽  
pp. 922-940
Author(s):  
Alfred L. Brophy
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Support Property ◽  
Late Twentieth

This chapter discusses the role of historical analysis in property law. The history of property has been used to offer support for property rights. Their long history makes the distribution of property look normal, indeed natural and something that cannot or should not be challenged. However, historically in the U.S there have been competing visions of property. From the Progressive era onward especially, the history of property has been used to show the unequal distribution of property and to offer an alternative vision that expands the rights of non-owners of property. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the history of opposition to feudalism and protection of the rights of non-owners was used to protect the rights of non-owners. Thus, the history of property has been a tool of judges and legislators to support property rights and it has also been, less frequently, a tool of critique.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document