Mixed Race Studies

Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times

Wesleyan University Press
2021-06-08
392 pages
31 color photos
Hardback ISBN: 9780819579911
Paperback ISBN: 9780819579928
eBook ISBN: 9780819579935

Edited by:

Christina Baade, Professor, Communication Studies & Media Arts
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Kristin A. McGee, Associate Professor of Popular Music
University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Essays investigate Beyoncé’s global impact

From Destiny’s Child to Lemonade, Homecoming, and The Gift, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has redefined global stardom, feminism, Black representation, and celebrity activism. This book brings together new work from sixteen international scholars to explore Beyonce’s impact as an artist and public figure from the perspectives of critical race studies, gender and women’s studies, queer and cultural studies, music, and fan studies. The authors explore Beyoncé’s musical persona as one that builds upon the lineages of Black female cool, Black southern culture, and Black feminist cultural production. They explore Beyoncé’s reception within and beyond North America, including how a range of performers—from YouTube gospel singers to Brazilian pop artists have drawn inspiration from her performances and image. The authors show how Beyoncé’s music is a source of healing and kinship for many fans, particularly Black women and queer communities of color. Combining cutting edge research, vivid examples, and accessible writing, this collection provides multiple lenses onto the significance of Beyoncé in the United States and around the world.

Table of Contents

• Foreword / Janell Hobson
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Beyoncé Studies / Christina Baade, Marquita Smith, and Kristin McGee
• Part One “Diva” / Black Feminist Genealogies
  • 1. “I Came to Slay”: The Knowles Sisters, Black Feminism, and the Lineage of Black Female Cool / H. Zahra Caldwell
  • 2. From Colorism to Conjurings: Tracing the Dust in Beyoncé’s Lemonade / Cienna Davis
• Part Two “Formation” / A Southern Turn
  • 3. Beyoncé’s South and a “Formation” Nation / Riché Richardson
  • 4. Merging Past and Present in Lemonade’s Black Feminist Utopia / J. Brendan Shaw
• Part Three “XO” / Faith and Fandom
  • 5. At the Digital Cross(roads) with Beyoncé: Gospel Covers That Remix the Risqué into the Religious / Birgitta J. Johnson
  • 6. “She Made Me Understand”: How Lemonade Raised the Intersectional Consciousness of Beyoncé’s International Fans / Rebecca J. Sheehan
• Part Four “Worldwide Woman” / Beyoncé’s Reception Beyond the United States
  • 7. The Performative Negotiations of Beyoncé in Brazilian Bodies and the Construction of the Pop Diva in Ludmilla’s Funk Carioca and Gaby Amarantos’s Tecnobrega / Simone Pereira de Sá and Thiago Soares
  • 8. A Critical Analysis of White Ignorance Within Beyoncé’s Online Reception in the Spanish Context / Elena Herrera Quintana
• Part Five “Hold up” / Performing Femme Affinity and Dissent
  • 9. Six-Inch Heels and Queer Black Femmes: Beyoncé and Black Trans Women / Jared Mackley-Crump and Kirsten Zemke
  • 10. From “Say My Name” to “Texas Bamma”: Transgressive Topoi, Oppositional Optics, and Sonic Subversion in Beyoncé’s “Formation” / Byron B Craig and Stephen E. Rahko
• Part Six “Freedom” / Sounding Protest, Hearing Politics
  • 11. Musical Form in Beyoncé’s Protest Music / Annelot Prins and Taylor Myers
  • 12. Beyoncé’s Black Feminist Critique: Multimodal Intertextuality and Intersectionality in “Sorry” / Rebekah Hutten and Lori Burns
• Part Seven “Pray You Catch Me” / Healing and Community
  • 13. Beyond “Becky with the Good Hair”: Hair and Beauty in Beyoncé’s “Sorry” / Kristin Denise Rowe
  • 14. The Livable, Surviving, and Healing Poetics of Lemonade: A Black Feminist Futurity in Action / Mary Senyonga
• About the Contributors
• Index

Nature Knows No Color-Line: Research into the Negro Ancestry in the White Race

Wesleyan University Press
2014 (originally published in 1952)
248 pages
ISBN: 9780960229451

J. A. Rogers (1888-1966)

In Nature Knows No Color-Line, originally published in 1952, historian Joel Augustus Rogers examined the origins of racial hierarchy and the color problem. Rogers was a humanist who believed that there were no scientifically evident racial divisions—all humans belong to one “race.” He believed that color prejudice generally evolved from issues of domination and power between two physiologically different groups. According to Rogers, color prejudice was then used a rationale for domination, subjugation and warfare. Societies developed myths and prejudices in order to pursue their own interests at the expense of other groups. This book argues that many instances of the contributions of black people had been left out of the history books, and gives many examples.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• I. Where Did the Color Problem Originate? And Why
• II. Color Prejudice Among Whites Themselves
• III. Negroes in Ancient Europe—Greece
• IV. Whites and Blacks in Ancient Rome
• V. Racial Intermixture in Spain and Portugal
• Vi. The Negro As “Moor.” Aristocratic European Families
• VII. Whites and Blacks in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany
• VIII. Negro Ancestry in the French
• IX. Negro Ancestry in the Anglo-Saxon “Race”
• X. Negro Ancestry in White America
• XI. Recent Mixed Marriages
• Appendix—Miscellany on Race Mixture
• Appendix—General Miscellany
• Index