Category: Literary/Artistic Criticism

  • 305. The Social Construction of Race in the U.S. Vassar College Poughkeepsie, New York Diane Harriford, Professor of Sociology This course examines the social construction of race in the United States from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. The focus is on the changing racial meanings and identities of specific socio-historical groups…

  • Not Another Remix: How Obama Became the First Hip-Hop President Journal of Popular Music Studies Volume 22, Issue 4, December 2010 pages 389–415 DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-1598.2010.01252.x Travis L. Gosa, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Cornell University Cornell University January 20, 2009 marked the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African-American president of the United…

  • Speaking in Tongues The New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 3 (2009-02-26) Zadie Smith The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1. Hello. This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less…

  • Cross-Cultural Affinities between Native American and White Women in “The Alaska Widow” by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far) MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 38, Number 1 (Spring 2013) pages 155-163 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mls002 Mary Chapman, Associate Professor of English University of British Columbia When her work was recovered in the 1980s, Edith Eaton…

  • Ai Means Love The Kenyon Review 2010-03-27 Tamiko Beyer Last week, the poet Ai passed away, unexpectedly. She was one of the first poets I read when I started studying poetry, and I have always admired the fierce bravery of her work. From her poems, I learned about the poetic possibilities of the persona. I…

  • Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race University of Georgia Press 2002-12-02 280 pages 6 x 9 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8203-2435-7 Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8203-2724-2 Dean McWilliams (1939-2006), J. Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities and professor of English Ohio University The first extended exploration of the construction of racial identity in Chesnutt’s writings Charles…

  • Everybody passes. Not just racial minorities. As Marcia Dawkins explains, passing has been occurring for millennia, since intercultural and interracial contact began. And with this profound new study, she explores its old limits and new possibilities: from women passing as men and able-bodied persons passing as disabled to black classics professors passing as Jewish and…

  • Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical [Review by Alan Gomberg] Talkin’ Broadway 2013-03-27 Alan Gomberg Much of Todd Decker’s Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical should prove fascinating to readers who have a deep interest in the creation and performance history of this classic, much-revived and -revised musical. Many of those…

  • Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical Oxford University Press October 2012 328 pages ISBN13: 9780199759378; ISBN10: 0199759375 Todd Decker, Assistant Professor, Musicology Washington University in St. Louis Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical tells the full story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in Broadway history. Drawing…

  • “The Souls of Mixed Folk” examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works—novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations—as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical.