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Author: Rebecca Ferguson
Publisher: Peter Lang
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 9789052011677
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTopics include: 'Complexity and Continuity'; 'Transition, Exclusion and Illusion'; 'The Use of an Eye'; 'Fragmentation and Reconstruction'; 'Shifting Foundations'; 'Living History'; and more.
Author: J. Martin Favor
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 204
ISBN-13: 9780822323457
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAnalysis of four Harlem Renaissance texts that challenges our assumptions about the stability of racial identity and investigates the ways those assumptions shape how we have read literature by Black writers.
Author: Philipp Löffler
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 1571139524
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExcavates the contemporary revival of 19th-century cultural pluralism, revealing how American novelists since the 1990s have appropriated the historical novel in the pursuit of selfhood rather than truth, fundamentally repositioning the genre in American culture.
Author: Shameem Kabir
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-10-06
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 1474290485
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores lesbians in film from early representations to contemporary ones, spanning sixty years and over twenty films. Concentrating on lesbian desire and subtext, Kabir draws on films such as Queen Christina, The Killing of Sister George, Rebecca, Desperately Seeking Susan and The Color Purple. She details their narratives in conjunction with an examination of different spectating positions and new syntheses of filmic languages. Deploying lesbian history, black subjectivity, feminist film criticism and material from psychoanalysis, Daughters of Desire explores narrative, desire and identifications. From castration and agency to the fetishization of beauty, from mothering, narcissism, and Oedipus to rage and trauma, Kabir crosses frontiers in film studies and feminist theory.
Author: Ytasha L. Womack
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2010-01-01
Total Pages: 225
ISBN-13: 1569765413
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs a young journalist covering black life at large, author Ytasha L. Womack was caught unaware when she found herself straddling black culture's rarely acknowledged generation gaps and cultural divides. Traditional images show blacks unified culturally, politically, and socially, united by race at venues such as churches and community meetings. But in the “post black” era, even though individuals define themselves first as black, they do not necessarily define themselves by tradition as much as by personal interests, points of view, and lifestyle. In Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity, Womack takes a fresh look at dynamics shaping the lives of contemporary African Americans. Although grateful to generations that have paved the way, many cannot relate to the rhetoric of pundits who speak as ambassadors of black life any more than they see themselves in exaggerated hip-hop images. Combining interviews, opinions of experts, and extensive research, Post Black will open the eyes of some, validate the lives of others, and provide a realistic picture of the expanding community.
Author: Paul C. Rosenblatt
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-03
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 1317027760
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn spite of the existence of statistics and numerical data on various aspects of African American life, including housing, earnings, assets, unemployment, household violence, teen pregnancy and encounters with the criminal justice system, social science literature on how racism affects the everyday interactions of African American families is limited. How does racism come home to and affect African American families? If a father in an African American family is denied employment on the basis of his race or a wife is demeaned at work by racist slurs, how is their family life affected? Given the lack of social science literature responding to these questions, this volume turns to an alternative source in order to address them: literature. Engaging with novels written by African American authors, it explores their rich depictions of African American family life, showing how these can contribute to our sociological knowledge and making the case for the novel as an object and source of social research. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of the sociology of the family, race and ethnicity, cultural studies and literature.
Author: Isabella van Elferen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2009-03-26
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 1443807451
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day presents an interdisciplinary approach to an important aspect of Gothic texts, films, and music: that of rewriting. From the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to present-day vampire films and Goth music, the genre is characterised by its nostalgic reflection on past worlds, narratives, and identities. Gothic nostalgia is often accompanied by a transgressive drive, resulting in perversions of the rewritten past—the modern vampire is no longer embodied evil but an attractive dandy, while Goth subcultures reflect on Victorian aesthetics but pervert them by adding fetishist elements. Gothic nostalgia transforms the past, turning it upside down, foregrounding its background, and corrupting its order. In this volume an international group of philosophy, literature, film, and music scholars investigates the instrumental role of nostalgia and perversion in the Gothic’s rewriting of the past. If elements of both nostalgia and perversion are operative in Gothic rewriting, how are they connected? How do they play out in differing media? How do they change audiences’ views on the relationships between binaries such as past and present, other and self, and norm and deviation? Nostalgia or Perversion brings together the early Gothic novel, present-day female and black Gothic literature, Goth subculture and music, and the imagery of horror films and comic books, thus broadening the definition of ‘Gothic’ from a literary genre to a gesture of pervasive cultural criticism. The interdisciplinary analysis of nostalgia and perversion in Gothic rewriting uncovers wholly new insights into the artistic and social functions of the Gothic, making the volume useful to both scholars and students. As the essays reflect on academic as well as popular texts and media, it is also accessible to general readers. "Nostalgia or Perversion provides a sophisticated analysis of how the Gothic radically rewrites the past, not as nostalgia but as a calculated act of transgression. The past and how its reconstructions break down the boundaries between real and unreal, and normal and abnormal, is examined across a range of different media, including novels, films, comic books, television and music. The essays in this collection also address how this issue shapes Gothic formulations of race, sexuality, and gender. Both ambitious in scope and focused and rigorous in its analysis, this book provides a critically important re-evaluation of the Gothic tradition." —Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan (UK).
Author: Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2010-12
Total Pages: 237
ISBN-13: 0807138177
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this first interdisciplinary study of all nine of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's novels, Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber investigates how the communal and personal trauma of slavery embedded in the bodies and minds of its victims lives on through successive generations of African Americans. Approaching trauma from several cutting-edge theoretical perspectives -- psychoanalytic, neurobiological, and cultural and social theories -- Schreiber analyzes the lasting effects of slavery as depicted in Morrison's work and considers the almost insurmountable task of recovering from trauma to gain subjectivity. With an innovative application of neuroscience to literary criticism, Schreiber explains how trauma, whether initiated by physical abuse, dehumanization, discrimination, exclusion, or abandonment, becomes embedded in both psychic and bodily circuits. Slavery and its legacy of cultural rejection create trauma on individual, familial, and community levels, and parents unwittingly transmit their trauma to their children through repetition of their bodily stored experiences. Concepts of "home" -- whether a physical place, community, or relationship -- are reconstructed through memory to provide a positive self and serve as a healing space for Morrison's characters. Remembering and retelling trauma within a supportive community enables trauma victims to move forward and attain a meaningful subjectivity and selfhood. Through careful analysis of each novel, Schreiber traces the success or failure of Morrison's characters to build or rebuild a cohesive self, starting with slavery and the initial postslavery generation, and continuing through the twentieth century, with a special focus on the effects of inherited trauma on children. When characters attempt to escape trauma through physical relocation, or to project their pain onto others through aggressive behavior or scapegoating, the development of selfhood falters. Only when trauma is confronted through verbalization and challenged with reparative images of home, can memories of a positive self overcome the pain of past experiences and cultural rejection. While the cultural trauma of slavery can never truly disappear, Schreiber argues that memories that reconstruct a positive self, whether created by people, relationships, a physical place, or a concept, help Morrison's characters to establish subjectivity. A groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, Schreiber's book unites psychoanalytic, neurobiological, and social theories into a full and richly textured analysis of trauma and the possibility of healing in Morrison's novels.
Author: Robert L. Adams Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-14
Total Pages: 184
ISBN-13: 1317850467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume considers the African Diaspora through the underexplored Afro-Latino experience in the Caribbean and South America. Utilizing both established and emerging approaches such as feminism and Atlantic studies, the authors explore the production of historical and contemporary identities and cultural practices within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Rewriting the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America illustrates how far the fields of Afro-Latino and African Diaspora studies have advanced beyond the Herskovits and Frazier debates of the 1940s. The book’s arguments complicate Herskovits’ insistence on Black culture being an exclusive reflection of African survivals, as well as Frazier’s counter-claim of African American culture being a result of slavery and colonialism. This collection of thought-provoking essays extends the concepts of diaspora and transnationalism, forcing the reader to reassess their present limitations as interpretive tools. In the process, Afro-Latinos are rendered visible as national actors and transnational citizens. This book was originally published as a special issue of African and Black Diaspora.
Author: Jaleel Akhtar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2014-06-19
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 1443861863
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDismemberment in the Fiction of Toni Morrison is a multifaceted study of Toni Morrison’s fiction. It investigates racism and the concomitant experiences of dismemberment in Morrison’s fiction from multiple perspectives, including history, psychology, and culture. Looking at dismemberment from multiple perspectives, rather than the more generic and abstract expression of fragmentation, likens the impact of racism on individuals to the splitting of bodies, amputation, phantom limbs and traumatic memories, and in more concrete and visceral terms. Morrison’s art of story-telling involves an interactive conversation from multiple perspectives, demanding more attentive participation from her readers in deconstructing the meaning of her narratives. Studying her fiction from multiple perspectives suggests various ways of examining the pernicious impact of racism which produces various forms of dismemberment in her characters. This investigation does this without giving prominence to one perspective at the expense of other equally relevant modes of interpretation. Morrison’s depiction of the trauma of racism on the psyche of her characters and the concomitant experiences of dismemberment has its roots in the historical and social realities of African Americans. The psychological impact of racism on Morrison’s characters requires viewing through the lens of the historical and social realities that play a significant role. Morrison enacts racial alienation and dismemberment as complex processes; it is consequently important to look at her project from multiple perspectives. Examining the lived reality of African Americans from only one perspective ignores dismemberment in the light of the socio-political and historical realities of African American experience in the United States, and entails reconsideration of the physical, historical, social and psychological realities. This investigation argues for the importance of combining these historical and psychological, as well as sociocultural, analyses of Morrison’s fiction in order to acquire a more rounded understanding of racism and its debilitating effects on the psyche. By situating Morrison’s fiction within a variety of discourses, this study offers a multifaceted, highly interdisciplinary framework for a more rewarding analysis of her fiction.
