11-, 12-, and 13½-Bar Blues: Time and African American Country Blues Recordings (1925–1938)

This chapter examines commercially-issued recordings of African American country blues from the early twentieth century, and considers the politics of representation involved with these recordings related to the metric and structural orthodoxies of blues performance. Often featuring solo male singers performing with guitar accompaniment, the recorded country blues of the 1920s–30s are markedly flexible in their approaches to timing. Drawing upon recordings of important country blues artists including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton, the chapter considers key issues such as the controversy over the speed at which Johnson’s records were recorded, the flexible approach musicians took to the standard 12-bar format, and the strictures that the three-and-a-half minute 78 rpm record side posed for artists’ songcraft. How these factors challenge musicological orthodoxies over conventional blues structures and historical insights into the practice of the blues is illuminated through the proposal that these recordings struggle with contentious narratives of primitivism, racial stereotyping, and authenticity, whereby canonical 78 rpm records are reified to fit a prevailing narrative of the country blues as atavistic and authentic.

Keeping race at bay: familial DNA research, the ‘Turkish Community,’ and the pragmatics of multiple collectives in investigative practice

In this contribution, we analyze the recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn rape and murder case. In this case, committed in 1992, no suspect could be identified until investigatory actors employed familial DNA searching in 2017. Crucially, familial DNA typing raised the possibility of ethnic and racial stereotyping and profiling, particularly against the background of the first case in which familial DNA typing was used in the Netherlands: the Marianne Vaatstra case, which from the start had been marred by controversy about the ethnicity of the unknown perpetrator. In our analysis, we show how criminal justice actors managed this potential for racialization through strategically mobilizing and carefully managing multiple collectives. Drawing on the notions of multiplicity and non-coherence, we show we do not only empirically trace the situated ethics and pragmatics of familial DNA research in this specific case, but we also develop a theoretical argument on the multiple and non-coherent character of race itself and its attendant ethical, political, and methodological possibilities and obligations.

All-Colored Comedy

Musical comedy films made by the Nicholas Brothers bring to light the staggering racist stereotyping that existed in Hollywood in the thirties. In the Minstrel Night scene in Kid Millions (1934), star Eddie Cantor in blackface sings “I Want to be a Minstrel Man,” with close-ups on the clean, bright face of Harold Nicholas, singing the same lyrics, and the brothers having to play end men to the star. Nicholas Brothers continue to defy racial stereotyping, demonstrating their virtuosic brilliance in song and dance in Jealousy (1934), American Wife (1936), Big Broadcast of 1936, Black Network (1936), and The All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935).

“I Don’t Know How You Get Past That”: Racism and Stereotyping in College Football Recruiting Media

College football programs invest millions of dollars into recruiting top high school prospects. This recruiting process is covered extensively by reporters from sports media outlets. While the players being recruited are predominately Black, the sports media is disproportionately dominated by White men. In this context, the current study reports on data from interviews with 15 participants who work in the college football recruiting media industry. While some participants adopted a color-blind perspective dominated by a belief that racism no longer exists, most reporters expressed an awareness of racial stereotypes in the sports media and felt a need to address racial inequity. Such awareness presents an opportunity for anti-racist training that may help media members avoid racial stereotyping and address racism in the field.

Qualitative Examination on the Influences of the Internet on Racism and its Online Manifestation

Growing number of scholars have noted that racism may thrive and persevere in explicit, blatant forms in the online context. Little research exists on the nature of racism on the Internet. In contributing to this emerging yet understudied issue, the current study conducted an inductive thematic analysis to examine people's attitude toward (a) how the Internet has influenced racism, and (b) how people may experience racism on the Internet. The themes represented in this paper show that the increased anonymity and greater accessibility of the Internet gave platform and identity protection for expressions and aggregation of racist attitudes. Some of the themes explicated positive influences in which people were also able to express and form anti-racist online movements, and confront racist users by taking advantage of the increased anonymity. In terms of how racism was experienced on the Internet, the author identified the following themes: vicarious observation, racist humor, negative racial stereotyping, racist online media, and racist online hate groups. Implications for future research on racism on Internet is discussed.

Tricity Vogue’s ‘blueing up’ as sedimented resistance: Extravagant costume and the expanded field of dressing up

My focus in this article is to understand the way theatrical costume is performed in subcultural cabaret spaces, specifically The Blue Lady Sings Back by London-based cabaret singer Tricity Vogue. This show premiered at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in the area of Vauxhall in South London that already has an embedded history of hedonistic pleasure. With reference to Dorita Hannah’s ‘expanded’ notion of costume as a ‘body-object-event’ and Jasbir Puar’s broader understanding of categories of race, gender and sexuality as events and bodily encounters, I seek to understand the way theatrical feminine costume enfolds dissident and marginalized histories of resistant urban space and site. In this show, Tricity Vogue undertakes multiple costume changes that embody various histories and contexts of cabaret performance: as Bollywood dancer Madhuri Dixit, as a European Marlene Dietrich-like cabaret singer and as a Josephine Baker-esque character in a banana skirt. All of this whilst wearing a blue stocking and blue body paint, effectively ‘blueing’ up. This steps into an uncomfortable territory in what could be seen as cultural appropriation, racial stereotyping and speaking for others. This concern also has currency within the contemporary burlesque community who are acutely self-conscious and politicized as regards this kind of costume and performative appropriation. Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of feminist killjoys (2017) will be employed to better understand these difficult conversations about dressing up with Aoife Monks’ (2010) discussion of multiple costume changes being used as a strategy for ‘undoing’ stereotypes and rethinking a feminist ‘we’. By also drawing on diva studies, which builds on Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘diva citizenship’, and postcolonial feminism, I will argue that the costumed cabaret body becomes a medium for women to politicize and reframe pleasure through the costumed spectacle of cabaret’s various erotic and exotic muses.

RACIAL STEREOTYPING IN BRUCE NORRIS PLAY SCRIPT CLYBOURNE PARK (2010)

This thesis is an analysis of a play written by Bruce Norris, entitled Clybourne Park (2010). This study is aimed to expose the issue about racial stereotyping which is done by the white people toward the Black and to know contribution dramatic elements; character, plot (conflict), setting, and stage direction in revealing the issue of racial stereotyping. This analysis is related to the concept of Orientalism by Edward Said in the post-colonial approach and also supported by the concepts of stereotype by Gamble. The result of this analysis is to expose the forms of stereotype toward black people. White sees blacks as poor people and black as a barbaric group.

Building national identity in opposition to otherness in liberal Age. Racial prejudices in trademark images in Central State Archives

The paper analyses the origins of Italian national identity in opposition to the «otherness» of the African peoples subject to colonization between the end of the 19th century and the 1920s. The paper takes into consideration background studies in the history of pedagogy, among which, Gabrielli (2013, 2015) and colonial studies as Del Boca (1988) and Labanca (2002) in order to investigate the development of racial stereotypes outside the school. Racial stereotyping increased in advertising and emerged in trademark images of Italian companies so that it influenced the idea of otherness between 1890 – i.e. the conquest of Eritrea – and 1922 – i.e. the advent of Fascism.

The politics and pedagogy of war remembrance

Drawing on analysis of learning materials, interviews and ethnographic observations of Scottish education, we analyse how projects aimed at teaching children to remember wars instil war-normalising logics through (a) substitution of self-reflective study of conflict with skill-based knowledge; (b) gendered and racial stereotyping via emphasis on soldier-centric (Scottish/British) nationalisms, localisation and depoliticisation of remembrance; (c) affective meaning-making and embodied performance of ‘Our War’. Utilising Ranciere-inspired critical pedagogy, we explore opportunities for critical engagement with the legacy of conflicts.