To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: African Americans in popular culture.
Journal articles on the topic 'African Americans in popular culture'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 journal articles for your research on the topic 'African Americans in popular culture.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Martinez, Theresa A. "Popular Culture as Oppositional Culture: Rap as Resistance." Sociological Perspectives 40, no. 2 (June 1997): 265–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1389525.
Full textAbstract:
Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (1995) build on the theory of oppositional culture, arguing that African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist oppression under internal colonialism. In this paper, rap music is identified as an important African American popular cultural form that also emerges as a form of oppositional culture. A brief analysis of the lyrics of political and gangsta rappers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, provides key themes of distrust, anger, resistance, and critique of a perceived racist and discriminatory society. Rap music is discussed as music with a message of resistance, empowerment, and social critique, and as a herald of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
2
Brooks, D. A. "Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930." Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (February 15, 2013): 1267–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas526.
Full text
3
Manley, Theodoric. "BEYOND BLACKFACE: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CREATION OF AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, 1890–1930." Ethnic and Racial Studies 35, no. 6 (June 2012): 1097–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2012.658830.
Full text
4
Browne, Ray B. "African Americans and Popular Culture. 3 Vols by Todd Boyd, Editor." Journal of American Culture 32, no. 2 (June 2009): 165. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734x.2009.00707.x.
Full text
5
Gonzalez, Michelle A. "Review: Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on Popular Culture and Religious Expression." Theological Studies 71, no. 3 (September 2010): 737–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004056391007100321.
Full text
6
Sun, Lei. "Extolling Blackness: The African Culture in The Color Purple." English Language and Literature Studies 7, no. 1 (January 20, 2017): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v7n1p13.
Full textAbstract:
Alice Walker, advocates African cultures in her epistolary novel The Color Purple. Underscoring the fact that quilt-making has an ancient history in the black community and presents the African tradition of folk art and the rich legacy of visual images in African culture, Walker employs the image of quilts and quilt-making to associate with the symbolic meaning of sisterhood, family history and self-creation. Also, she depicts Shug as the most popular character as a blues singer in the novel, to indicate that she acknowledges her mode of thinking that blues as one secular African tradition can deliver its spiritual power to African Americans.
7
Billah, Zakiyah Dania. "Watchmen (2019): Is it an African-American superhero narrative or another traditional way to present racism?" Leksika: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra dan Pengajarannya 17, no. 1 (February 20, 2023): 56. http://dx.doi.org/10.30595/lks.v17i1.15797.
Full textAbstract:
There have been many studies on race relations between African-American and White-American or Asian-American and White-American. However, there are few studies regarding the portrayal of these three races in media, such as film. The purpose of this study is to expose the Watchmen (2019) television series’ African-American superhero narrative and its racial relationship between white Americans, African Americans, and Vietnamese Americans (Asian Americans). In the United States, recent race relation is considered better than in the past, as proved by Obama serving the country for two terms, but the media is still preserving each race’s labels. This study argues that this series is proof of racist behavior in media. This qualitative study uses narrative and non-narrative to analyze the data gained from the series. This television series, uncommonly, shows the White-American as the villain while the African American as the hero, which makes this series worth analyzing. The series finally attained a complex racial relationship when a Vietnamese-American character was introduced. Racial stereotypes are frequently depicted in popular culture, including movies and television shows. Consequently, it is interesting to investigate its intricacy in light of white supremacy. This series presents several shots and events indicating a racist community, even from the very beginning of the series. Thus, this study argues that the series does not portray White-American as a villain but perpetuates the stereotypes of African-Americans and Asian-American.
8
Snyder, Rob. "Sources: Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture." Reference & User Services Quarterly 51, no. 1 (September 1, 2011): 73–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/rusq.51n1.73.
Full text
9
Agbere, Dawud Abdul-Aziz. "Islam in the African-American Experience." American Journal of Islam and Society 16, no. 1 (April 1, 1999): 150–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v16i1.2138.
Full textAbstract:
African-American Islam, especially as practiced by the Nation oflslam, continuesto engage the attention of many scholars. The racial separatist tendency,contrasted against the color blindness of global Islam, has been the focal pointof most of these studies. The historical presence of African Americans in themidst of American racism has been explained as, among other things, the mainimpetus behind African-American nationalism and racial separatism. Islam inthe African-American Experience is yet another attempt to explain this historicalposition. Originally the author's Ph.D. dissertation, the book spans 293pages, including notes, select biographies, indices, and thirteen illustrations. Itstwo parts, "Root Sources" and "Prophets of the City," comprise six chapters; there is also an introduction and an epilogue. The book is particularly designedfor students interested in African-American Islam. The central theme of thebook is the signifktion (naming and identifying) of the African Americanwithin the context of global Islam. The author identifies three factors thatexplain the racial-separatist phenomenon of African-American Islam:American racism, the Pan-African political movements of African-Americansin the early twentieth century, and the historic patterns of racial separatism inIslam. His explanations of the first two factors, though not new to the field ofAfrican-American studies, is well presented. However, his third explanation,which tries to connect the racial-separatist tendency of African-AmericanMuslims to what he tern the “historic pattern of racial separatism” in Islam,seems both controversial and problematic.In his introduction, the author touches on the African American’s sensitivityto signification, citing the long debate in African-American circles. Islam, heargues, offered African Americans two consolations: first, a spiritual, communal,and global meaning, which discoMects them in some way from Americanpolitical and public life; second, a source of political and cultural meaning inAfrican-American popular culture. He argues that a black person in America,Muslim or otherwise, takes an Islamic name to maintain or reclaim Africancultural roots or to negate the power and meaning of his European name. Thus,Islam to the black American is not just a spiritual domain, but also a culturalheritage.Part 1, “Root Sources,” contains two chapters and traces the black Africancontact with Islam from the beginning with Bilal during the time of theProphet, to the subsequent expansion of Islam to black Africa, particularlyWest Africa, by means of conversion, conquest, and trade. He also points to animportant fact: the exemplary spiritual and intellectual qualities of NorthAmerican Muslims were major factors behind black West Africans conversionto Islam. The author discusses the role of Arab Muslims in the enslavement ofAfrican Muslims under the banner of jihad, particularly in West Africa, abehavior the author described as Arabs’ separate and radical agenda for WestAfrican black Muslims. Nonetheless, the author categorically absolves Islam,as a system of religion, from the acts of its adherents (p. 21). This notwithstanding,the author notes the role these Muslims played in the educational andprofessional development of African Muslims ...
10
Potgieter, Koen. "“This Disintegrating Force”: Reading Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie as a Narrative of Black Upward Mobility." aspeers: emerging voices in american studies 5 (2012): 69–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.54465/aspeers.05-07.
Full textAbstract:
In this essay, I argue that Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel Sister Carrie can be read as a narrative of African American migration to the Northern cities. Sister Carrie engages with social change at the turn of the century, of which the migration of African Americans and others to large urban centers was a significant part. The novel describes the social fall and ruin of the middle-class figure Hurstwood while it depicts Carrie as an ethnic Other becoming rich and famous. In numerous accounts of Carrie’s attitudes and behavior, there are striking similarities to stereotypes of African Americans, which were widely circulated through the era’s popular culture. Moreover, the way in which Carrie achieves fame as a Broadway actress echoes the success that a number of black performers were experiencing there for the first time. Through these resemblances, the turn-of-the-century reader could come to recognize an important subtext in Sister Carrie—the possibility of upward mobility for African Americans moving to places such as New York City or Chicago.
11
Davis, Mary Kemp, Catherine Silk, and John Silk. "Racism and Anti-Racism in American Popular Culture: Portrayals of African-Americans in Fiction and Film." American Literature 63, no. 1 (March 1991): 131. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2926574.
Full text
12
Boskin, Joseph, Catherine Silk, and John Silk. "Racism and Anti-Racism in American Popular Culture: Portrayals of African-Americans in Fiction and Film." Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (June 1992): 287. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2078555.
Full text
13
McLeod, Ken. "Afro-Samurai: techno-Orientalism and contemporary hip hop." Popular Music 32, no. 2 (May 2013): 259–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261143013000056.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThis article examines the practice and recent rise in the use of various aspects of Japanese popular culture in hip hop, particularly as manifest in the work of RZA, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj. Often these references highlight the high-tech, futuristic aesthetic of much Japanese popular culture and thus resonate with concepts and practices surrounding Afro-futurism. Drawing on various theories of hybridity, this article analyses how Japanese popular culture has informed constructions of African American identity. In contrast to the often sensational media coverage of racial tensions between African American and Asian communities, the nexus of Japanese popular culture and African American hip hop evinces a sympathetic connection based on shared notions of Afro-Asian liberation and empowerment achieved, in part, through a common aesthetic of technological mastery and appropriation. The synthesis of Asian popular culture and African American hip hop represents a globally hybridised experience of identity and racial formation in the 21st century.
14
Nelson, Angela M. "“At This Age, This Is Who I Am”: CeCe Winans, Exilic Consciousness, and the American Popular Music Star System." Open Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (November 1, 2018): 475–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/culture-2018-0043.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract My paper addresses the intersections of the American popular music star system, Black female Gospel singers, Gospel Music, and the exilic consciousness of the Sanctified Church with special attention to life and music of Gospelwoman Priscilla Marie “CeCe” Winans Love. I argue that CeCe Winans and the marketing campaign for Winans’ album Let Them Fall in Love, is indicative of the encroachment of American popular music’s star system into self-elected “exiled” Gospel Music and into the lives of “exiled” Gospelwomen. Gospelwomen are 20th and 21st century urban African American Protestant Christian women who are paid for singing Gospel Music and who have recorded at least one Gospel album for national distribution. The self-elected exile of Gospelwomen refers to their decision to live a life based on the values of the Kingdom of God while encountering and negotiating opposing values in American popular culture. Gospelwomen and Gospel Music are impacted by the demands of stardom in America’s celebrity culture which includes achieved success and branding. Gospelwomen negotiate these components of stardom molding them into mechanisms that conform to their beliefs and needs.
15
Martinez, Theresa A. "Race and Popular Culture: Teaching African American Leadership Styles through Popular Music." Teaching Sociology 26, no. 3 (July 1998): 207. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1318834.
Full text
16
Sklaroff, Lauren Rebecca. "W. Fitzhugh Brundage, editor. Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890–1930." American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (September 21, 2012): 1232–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ahr/117.4.1232.
Full text
17
WELCH, ROSANNE. "Anthony Pinn and Benjamin Valentin, eds.Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on Popular Culture and Religious Expression." Women's Studies 41, no. 1 (January 2012): 99–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2012.628620.
Full text
18
Lee, Jamie Shinhee. "Globalization of African American Vernacular English in popular culture." English World-Wide 32, no. 1 (February 17, 2011): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.32.1.01lee.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines crossing (Bucholtz 1999; Cutler 1999; Rampton 1995) in Korean hip hop Blinglish as a case study of globalization of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in popular culture. Blinglish in Korean hip hop can be understood as a prime example of “English from below” (Preisler 1999) to informally express subcultural identity and style. The findings of the study suggest that AAVE features appear at different linguistic levels including lexis, phonology, and morpho-syntax in Korean hip hop Blinglish but do not demonstrate the same degree of AAVE penetration, with a frequency-related hierarchy emerging among these linguistic components. The area of Korean hip hop Blinglish with the heaviest crossing influence from AAVE is found to be lexis followed by phonology. The presence of AAVE syntactic features is somewhat restricted in type and occurrence, indicating that the verbal markers in AAVE are considerably varied and intricate, and syntactic elements are not as easily crossed by non-AAVE speakers as lexical items.
19
Bowersox, Jeff. "Seeing Black: Foote’s Afro-American Company and the Performance of Racial Uplift in Imperial Germany in 1891." German History 38, no. 3 (September 2020): 387–413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghaa064.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract By 1914 African American entertainers had become a regular part of variety show programmes across the German lands, but despite their evident popularity, they have received little scholarly attention except as part of the pre-history of jazz. But even before 1914 African American performers took an active part in transatlantic conversations about the meanings of race, challenging racialized understandings of nation, culture and modernity. To illustrate the challenge presented by African American performance and the range of German responses, this article takes up a little-known case study, the German tour of William Foote’s Afro-American Company in 1891. Led by a white impresario, the show brought together the broad range of black popular performance—minstrel song and dance, jubilee choirs, social dance and concert singing—to demonstrate the rapid progress of African American cultivation since emancipation. This message of racial uplift was framed in ethnographic terms, making a case that African Americans, like Germans, possessed distinctive folk forms that could be refined into cultivated forms with universal value. This framing made an uplifting case for an equivalence between African American and German cultures, but there were also ambivalences built into Foote’s project as organizers played to audiences’ racialized expectations. Analysing German commentators’ responses to performances of American blackness allows us to interrogate competing discourses of blackness in the German lands and the ways they could be used strategically. More broadly, those responses also illustrate how ideas about race were negotiated, produced and popularized in commercial entertainments.
20
Nelson, Angela M. "Introduction to the Special Issue on “Religions in African-American Popular Culture”." Religions 10, no. 9 (August 30, 2019): 507. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10090507.
Full text
21
Chireau, Yvonne. "Looking for Black Religions in 20th Century Comics, 1931–1993." Religions 10, no. 6 (June 25, 2019): 400. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10060400.
Full textAbstract:
Relationships between religion and comics are generally unexplored in the academic literature. This article provides a brief history of Black religions in comic books, cartoons, animation, and newspaper strips, looking at African American Christianity, Islam, Africana (African diaspora) religions, and folk traditions such as Hoodoo and Conjure in the 20th century. Even though the treatment of Black religions in the comics was informed by stereotypical depictions of race and religion in United States (US) popular culture, African American comics creators contested these by offering alternatives in their treatment of Black religion themes.
22
Woods, Andrew. "American culture: A sociological perspectives." Linguistics and Culture Review 2, no. 1 (April 27, 2018): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.21744/lingcure.v2n1.6.
Full textAbstract:
The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western origin but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Pacific Island, and Latin American people and their cultures. American culture encompasses the customs and traditions of the United States. The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot" in which different cultures have contributed their own distinct "flavors" to American culture. The United States of America is a North American nation that is the world's most dominant economic and military power. Likewise, its cultural imprint spans the world, led in large part by its popular culture expressed in music, movies and television. The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western culture (European) origin and form but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American people and their cultures. The American way of life or simply the American way is the unique lifestyle of the people of the United States of America. It refers to a nationalist ethos that adheres to the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
23
Anderson, Austin. "Blackening the Frame: Kerry James Marshall's Rythm Mastr." Popular Culture Review 34, no. 2 (December 2023): 3–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2831-865x.2023.tb00797.x.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACTThis essay argues Marshall is “blackening the frame” with his African‐centric comic series Rythm Mastr. The series is a corrective to the overwhelming whiteness of canonical comics and the silencing and erasure of Black people in American popular culture and fine art. Through the incorporation of Yoruba figures within the superhero genre, Marshall explores Black history and reframes American popular culture towards an African‐oriented future as part of a broader insurgence among Black comic creators.
24
Richardson, James L. "Motivating at Risk African Americans and Hispanics Through the Study of New Media Technology." HETS Online Journal 1, no. 2 (November 8, 2022): 36–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.55420/2693.9193.v1.n2.89.
Full textAbstract:
The rising number of African Americans and Hispanics turning away from higher education is creating a problem that threatens many aspects of American society. Educators can help reverse this destructive trend by creating New Media based curricula that addresses the motivational factors impeding the academic success of these students. The recent advances in personal computing, as well as the rise of the Internet and global networks offer educators an unprecedented opportunity to reengage and motivate many of these students by teaching them to develop digital content that is technically advanced, economically viable, and which stays true to their core values. This new approach, which makes use of interactive technology, can bridge the gap and make it possible for many disenfranchised African American and Hispanic students to view academia in a more positive light.
The rising number of African Americans and Hispanics turning away from college and higher education is creating a problem that threatens many aspects of American society. It has been shown that increasing numbers of these students, many without sufficient economic and socio-political influence, can lead to increased levels of poverty, criminal behavior, incarceration (James, 2004), and greater family instability. However at the same time that some of these “at risk” students are turning away from higher education, new media centric areas of our economy and popular culture are experiencing incredible growth with this same demographic (Smith, 2010).
25
Motha, Nkululeko. "‘ In Comes the New Black’: The Ghetto-Rural Black versus Blacksurbian Identities." Thinker 99, no. 2 (May 30, 2024): 114–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.36615/v4xz4r59.
Full textAbstract:
ith the emergence of the Black bourgeoisie in Africa and the diaspora, there is a need to conceptualise the urban Black person, who, in pursuit of a better life, had to redefine, adopt, and formulate an identity acceptable within the middle and upper social classes. Inclusivity and diversity are key terms in these classes because there is a need to design urban spaces accommodative and cognisant of the history informing the diverse groups inhabiting it. This should contemplate the effects of colonialism on the urban space and how colonialism influences the formulation of the different Black identities in urban spaces. This research contends that the inequalities of the urban space have created two groups of Black people: The Ghetto-Rural Black and the Blacksurbian especially in South African and American (for African Americans) urban space. This has created a hierarchy amongst Black people which has not been mitigated because of popular culture and how it influences the consciousness of Black people on race matters. This research uses D. A. Masolo’s arguments to conceptualise these concepts. Additionally, it proposes new ideas of Blackness to demonstrate dislocation and how the Blacksurbian influences exclusion from the urban space.
26
Forman, Seth. "A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song (review)." American Jewish History 87, no. 2 (1999): 243–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ajh.1999.0015.
Full text
27
Williams, Vernon J. "A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song (review)." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 20, no. 1 (2001): 175–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sho.2001.0080.
Full text
28
Weisenfeld, Judith. "“The Secret at the Root”: Performing African American Religious Modernity in Hall Johnson's Run, Little Chillun." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 21, no. 1 (2011): 39–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2011.21.1.39.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractFrancis Hall Johnson's (1888–1970) work to preserve and promote Negro spirituals places him among the twentieth century's most influential interpreters of African American religious music. Johnson was most closely associated with Marc Connelly's 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Green Pastures, for which he served as musical arranger and choral conductor. His participation in this production, which became a lightning rod for discussions about the nature of black religious thought, made him sharply aware of the complex terrain of popular culture representations of African American religious life for the consumption of white audiences. This article examines Johnson's 1933 “music-drama,” Run, Little Chillun, through which he hoped to counter the commonly deployed tropes of African Americans as a simple, naturally religious people. Moderately successful on Broadway, the production did particularly well when revived in California in 1938 and 1939 as part of the Federal Theatre and Federal Music projects.Most critics found Johnson's presentation of black Baptist music and worship to be thrillingly authentic but were confused by the theology of the drama's other religious community, the Pilgrims of the New Day. Examining Johnson's Pilgrims of the New Day in light of his interest in Christian Science and New Thought reveals a broader objective than providing a dramatic foil for the Baptists and a platform for endorsing Christianity. With his commitment to and expertise with vernacular forms of African American religious culture unassailable, Johnson presented a critique of the conservative tendencies and restrictive parochialism of some black church members and leaders and insisted on the ability of the individual religious self to range freely across a variety of spiritual possibilities. In doing so, he presented “the secret at the root” of black culture as not only revealing the spiritual genius of people of African descent but also as offering eternal and universal truths not bound by race.
29
Im, Jae-hyun. "Incorporating Hip-hop and Black Popular Culture in Korean Primary School English Teacher Training." Korea Association of Primary English Education 29, no. 4 (December 31, 2023): 201–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.25231/pee.2023.29.4.201.
Full textAbstract:
This study illustrates how hip-hop and black popular culture can be integrated into primary school English teacher education and explores Korean teachers’ reactions to these elements. Within an intensive teacher training program where hip-hop and black popular culture were introduced and adapted for Korean ELT, the study analyzed Korean primary school English teachers’ responses to the pedagogical values of these elements within Korean context. The findings reveal mixed attitudes toward the inclusion of hip-hop and black popular culture. From the perspective of “teacher as learner,” there were positive responses in terms of interest in African American English features and the value of hip-hop and black popular culture as educational resources and their trendiness in literacy education. However, their practicality was viewed negatively. Within the “discourse of schooling” in Korea, the positive aspects included the value of teaching American culture through hip-hop and black popular culture, while doubts about their effectiveness in Korean ELT prompted a negative response. Regarding “teaching activities,” positive reactions emerged when teachers contextualized racial issues in the U.S. in relation to Korean multiculturalism, but concerns arose about the appropriateness of the language and imagery in hip-hop. This study encourages further discussion on this topic.
30
Dhakal, Lekha Nath. "Musical Tradition and Cultural Vision in Langston Hughes’s Poetry." Literary Studies 33 (March 31, 2020): 41–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/litstud.v33i0.38034.
Full textAbstract:
In American music, Langston Hughes is one of the literary figures that hold a place similar to the aforementioned luminaries. In the literary field, Hughes is respected as one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. With the rise of African American Studies as an academic field in the 1970s, his life, writing, and influence has received frequent attention. What has not been documented in more specific terms is his importance to America’s musical culture in the twentieth century. Whether directly or indirectly, Langston Hughes has been a fixture in American musical culture, both popular and concert music, since the 1920s. In addition to his personal affinity for blues, jazz and other specifically African American musical forms such as gospel music, his vast contribution to American music specifically and American music culture in a broader sense can be separated into four general categories.
31
Mellinger, Wayne Martin. "Postcards from the Edge of the Color Line: Images of African Americans in Popular Culture, 1893–1917." Symbolic Interaction 15, no. 4 (November 1992): 413–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/si.1992.15.4.413.
Full text
32
Ebrahimian, Mojtaba. "After the American Century." American Journal of Islam and Society 33, no. 3 (July 1, 2016): 123–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v33i3.926.
Full textAbstract:
Brian T. Edwards’ book boasts of an insightful interdisciplinary approach thatdraws upon his expertise in anthropology, literary and cultural studies, Americanstudies, and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) studies. His approachand overall argument can benefit both the specialists in these disciplinesand the non-academic audience interested in the MENA region’s contemporarycultural history and connection to the United States’ international cultural politics.Edwards introduces two principal concepts to formulate his arguments:the “ends of circulation” and “jumping publics.” In his view, the former describes“new contexts for American texts” and the latter explicates “the wayculture moves through the world in the digital age” (p. 27).He offers four reasons why the circulation of cultural products “acrossborders and publics” is important to the contemporary American audience.
First, “The U.S. Department of State has invested time and funding in propagatingthe circulation of American culture.” Second, “American media venueshave a continuing interest in this topic, whether in the coverage of theEgyptian revolution or in the popular fascination with books such as ReadingLolita in Tehran (2003) that depict Americans or American culture displacedin the Middle East.” Third, many “popular and influential writers,” including“the developmentalist Daniel Lerner in the 1950s to Thomas Friedman in the1990s and 2000s to media studies journalist Clay Shirky, assume a technocentricor cyberutopian determinism,” and thus consider “access to newtechnologies and media” and “modernization and freedom” inevitably intertwined.And fourth, “In the fields of American literary studies and comparativeliterature, the ways in which the American culture and literature aretaken up around the world puts pressure on the ways of doing things in thosedisciplines” (p. 16) ...
33
Knoblauch, William M. "Misremembering Reagan: A Decade of Cultural Dissent." American Studies in Scandinavia 52, no. 2 (November 1, 2020): 63–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.22439/asca.v52i2.6499.
Full textAbstract:
Presidential legacies are constructed, and for the Republican Party perhaps no figure has benefitted from mythology, hagiography, and misremembrances than Ronald Wilson Reagan. Popularly, America’s 40th President is frequently remembered as residing over a massive economic upswing, restoring faith in the American military, and ushering in the end of the Cold War—combining to construct an image of a beloved, even visionary leader. Looking back at popular culture from the 1980s, however, paints a very different picture. From Reagan’s relationship with the press, his shortcomings acknowledging struggles in the African American community, to his near-legacy shattering handling of the Iran Contra crisis, 1980s popular culture helps to remind us that Reagan was not so nearly beloved as today’s pundits would have us believe.
34
Różalska, Aleksandra. "Transgressing the Controlling Images of African-American Women? Performing Black Womanhood in Contemporary American Television Series." EXtREme 21 Going Beyond in Post-Millennial North American Literature and Culture, no. 15 (Autumn 2021) (November 20, 2021): 273–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.7311/pjas.15/2/2021.07.
Full textAbstract:
Drawing from intersectionality theories and black feminist critiques of white, masculinist, and racist discourses still prevailing in the American popular culture of the twenty-first century, this article looks critically at contemporary images of African-American women in the selected television series. For at least four decades critics of American popular culture have been pointing to, on the one hand, the dominant stereotypes of African-American women (the so-called controlling images, to use the expression coined by Patricia Hill Collins) resulting from slavery, racial segregation, white racism and sexism as well as, on the other hand, to significant marginalization or invisibility of black women in mainstream film and television productions. In this context, the article analyzes two contemporary television shows casting African-American women as leading characters (e.g., Scandal, 2012-2018 and How To Get Away With Murder, 2014-2020) to see whether these narratives are novel in portraying black women’s experiences or, rather, they inscribe themselves in the assimilationist and post-racial ways of representation.
35
Adedeji PhD, Wale. "Music, Style and Message: A Classification of Major Themes in Nigerian Hip Hop." South Asian Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 4, no. 4 (August 12, 2022): 103–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.36346/sarjhss.2022.v04i04.010.
Full textAbstract:
Hip hop which originated from the African-American community of the Bronx New York is exerting a domineering effect in most African countries. It is un-arguably and gradually becoming the most popular mode of musical expression among artistes in the sub-sahara region with visible affiliation to the global popular culture trends. The Nigerian youths have embraced this music style and identified with its culture thereby bringing the genre to the mainstream of the country’s popular music scene. Through lyrical and textual analysis of select songs and artistes, this paper examines the Nigerian hip hop brand against the backdrop of its major identifiable themes and attempts a classification module for the genre via its output and messages.
36
Fejzula, Merve. "(Un) Cool Cats: Challenging the Traditional View of the French Response to Jazz." Journal of Jazz Studies 10, no. 2 (April 2, 2015): 203. http://dx.doi.org/10.14713/jjs.v10i2.95.
Full text
37
Booker, Vaughn. "“An Authentic Record of My Race”: Exploring the Popular Narratives of African American Religion in the Music of Duke Ellington." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 25, no. 1 (2015): 1–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2015.25.1.1.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractEdward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899–1974) emerged within the jazz profession as a prominent exponent of Harlem Renaissance racial uplift ideals about incorporating African American culture into artistic production. Formed in the early twentieth century's middle-class black Protestant culture but not a churchgoer in adulthood, Ellington conveyed a nostalgic appreciation of African American Christianity whenever hewrote music to chronicle African American history. This prominent jazz musician's religious nostalgia resulted in compositions that conveyed to a broader American audience a portrait of African American religiosity that was constantly “classical” and static—not quite primitive, but never appreciated as a modern aspect of black culture.This article examines several Ellington compositions from the late 1920s through the 1960s that exemplify his deployment of popular representations of African American religious belief and practice. Through the short filmBlack and Tanin the 1920s, the satirical popular song “Is That Religion?” in the 1930s, the long-form symphonic movementBlack, Brown and Beigein the 1940s, the lyricism of “Come Sunday” in the 1950s, and the dramatic prose of “My People” in the 1960s, Ellington attempted to capture a portrait of black religious practice without recognition of contemporaneous developments in black Protestant Christianity in the twentieth century's middle decades. Although existing Ellington scholarship has covered his “Sacred Concerts” in the 1960s and 1970s, this article engages themes and representations in Ellington's work prefiguring the religious jazz that became popular with white liberal Protestants in America and Europe. This discussion of religious narratives in Ellington's compositions affords an opportunity to reflect upon the (un)intended consequences of progressive, sympathetic cultural production, particularly on the part of prominent African American historical figures in their time. Moreover, this article attempts to locate the jazz profession as a critical site for the examination of racial and religious representation in African American religious history.
38
Alamo, Carlos. "DISPATCHES FROM A COLONIAL OUTPOST." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 9, no. 1 (October 20, 2011): 201–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x11000312.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractOver the last few decades social movements and race scholars have begun to uncover and critically examine the social, economic, and political linkages shared between Puerto Ricans and African Americans. Much of this literature has focused exclusively on the period of the Civil Rights Movement with particular emphasis on the Young Lords and Black Panthers. Despite this rich and informative literature, we know very little of the connective social histories and relationships between African Americans and Puerto Ricans that preceded these later social movements. This article traces the historically contingent and multifaceted ways in which African American journalists, between 1942 and 1951, found new political meanings in Puerto Rico as the island underwent a massive economic and social transformation, and how they used that knowledge to reconceptualize challenges to Black personhood in the United States. Examining the Black popular press in Puerto Rico during this period reveals that Black journalists took an active interest in the island because it represented a useful point of comparison for understanding the internal colonial model of social inequality hampering the U.S. African American community during the first half of the twentieth century. The racialized nature of U.S. colonialism experienced by the island, the sociopolitical and economic effects of its monocultural sugar economy, and the second-class citizenship of Puerto Ricans were among the most salient factors that led African American journalists to a broader anti-imperialist understanding of racism, illuminating the lack of civil and economic rights Blacks experienced within the United States.
39
Mahar, William J. "Ethiopian Skits and Sketches: Contents and Contexts of Blackface Minstrelsy, 1840–1890." Prospects 16 (October 1991): 241–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0361233300004543.
Full textAbstract:
Blackface minstrelsy is a troublesome topic in popular culture studies. Because burn-cork comedy originated and thrived in a racist society, many scholars and most nonscholars believe that minstrelsy's primary purpose was the creation and perpetuation of demeaning caricatures or untruthful portraits of African-Americans. Most studies published since the early 1960s emphasize the negative effects of blackface comedy or focus on the development of the principal stereotypes (the urban dandy and the shiftless plantation hand) rather than on the interpretive significance of blackface comedy within the broader context of American ethnic humor. While it is essential that minstrelsy's negative characteristics be explored and explained as overt manifestations of the racist attitudes many Americans shared, the narrow focus on race and/or racism as the primary feature of blackface entertainment limits the application of the interdisciplinary methods and interpretive strategies needed to understand the content and context of one of the most popular forms of American comedy. The limitations imposed by restrictive methodologies can be removed, however, if historians reconsider a few of the issues that have been bypassed in most recent studies of American minstrelsy, namely, (1) the nonracial contents of blackface comedy; (2) the treatment of nonblack ethnic groups; (3) the socializing and class-defining functions of minstrel show humor; (4) the importance of minstrel shows as evidence of American ideas about politics, work, gender differences, domestic life, courtship, and marriage; (5) the use of the burnt-cork “mask” as a vehicle for reflexive, self-deprecating humor among various social, ethnic, and economic groups; and (6) the relationships between minstrel shows and other forms of American and English theater.
40
Lindsey, Treva B. "“One Time for My Girls”: African-American Girlhood, Empowerment, and Popular Visual Culture." Journal of African American Studies 17, no. 1 (May 8, 2012): 22–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12111-012-9217-2.
Full text
41
Jackson, Jeffrey H. "Andy Fry. Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920–1960." American Historical Review 120, no. 3 (June 2015): 1128–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ahr/120.3.1128a.
Full text
42
Alouane, Nesrine. "Colored Music in America: a Colored Sense of Belonging? A cultural-linguistic study of hip-hop music lyrics." International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies 4, no. 1 (January 31, 2023): 13–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v4i1.283.
Full textAbstract:
As all people and nations experience a state of flux, national culture loses its solidity in the context of a global unified culture to which we are called, or rather forced, to belong. Here arise such vital questions as identity and belonging. The case study of this paper concerns the African-American sample as a minority group striving to seize its proper status in a ruthless West. This struggle comes highly significant when treading the edge of popular culture. The research is an inquiry into the extent to which belonging is felt, expressed and staged by the community in question throughout their representative popular culture, to mention hip-hop music. The complex nature of the topic requires, in fact, a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses, first, an anthropological examination of the backgrounds of the African-American ethnical group; second, a linguistic investigation of the African-American musical discourse (hip-hop lyrics); and third, a critical analytic deduction of the activist mission played by such musical genre concerning questions of identity and belonging. Practically speaking, the linguistic part will analyse a selected corpus of hip-hop song lyrics. The methodological process will use a qualitative content analysis technique to extract the linguistic patterns reinforcing the scope of identity and belonging. The concluding part will state some limitations that the research had encountered.
43
Fink, Robert. "Goal-Directed Soul? Analyzing Rhythmic Teleology in African American Popular Music." Journal of the American Musicological Society 64, no. 1 (2011): 179–238. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2011.64.1.179.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract A theoretical consideration of teleology in African American popular music, focusing on the late-1960s output of Motown Records. The question of goal direction and musical value in popular music is traced back to the theoretical dispute between Leonard Meyer and Charles Keil, who stand in for the two poles of an outmoded binarism: a “classical” music defined by control of teleology and delayed gratification, and a “popular” music defined by a liberating feeling of groove in an endless present. Soul music and culture, steeped in the aspirational drive of the black middle class, falsifies this view of African American popular music. Drawing on more recent analytical work on grooves (Butler, Danielsen), a model of rhythmic teleology is developed and then tested on two seminal tracks produced by Norman Whitfield and sung by the Temptations. In both “Cloud Nine” (1968) and “Runaway Child, Running Wild” (1969), Motown's signature “four on the floor beat” functions as a rhythmic tonic. Reception study supports the proposition that Whitfield's control of rhythmic teleology, combined with socially conscious lyrics about drug use and the counterculture, represent a powerful intervention in favor of goal direction and delayed gratification at a pivotal moment for the African American middle class.
44
VARA-DANNEN, THERESA C. "The Limits of White Memory: Slavery, Violence and the Amistad Incident." Journal of American Studies 49, no. 1 (August 7, 2014): 19–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875814001297.
Full textAbstract:
This article addresses the Amistad incident, and the evolving way this event was viewed by Connecticut journalists and residents; an examination of the language used in contemporary newspapers reveals why the Amistad story was largely forgotten in popular imagination in the United States until the 1980s, and completely forgotten in Sierra Leone, the homeland of the captives. The Amistad displayed the nation's most racist beliefs, along with its worst fears, in Connecticut newspaper accounts, accounting for the discomfort with which Southerners in particular regarded the case. The rebellious African kidnap victims were exotic visitors to Connecticut, eliciting much commentary about the “ignoble savages” who might be cannibals, but most certainly seemed to be murderers with insight and intellect; more troubling, they were men – this seemed indisputable – and they were fighting courageously and against the odds for their own freedom, the pivotal American value. In a culture that evaluated savagery visually, there was much to identify as “savage,” but, nonetheless, as the Africans came to reside in Connecticut awaiting their trial, they became human beings, with their own voices, recorded in newspaper accounts. They acquired names, translators, Western clothing, English and Bible lessons, transforming their threatening black masculinity into the only image acceptable to white America, “the suffering servant”; in spite of the pro-slavery newspaper portrayal of the Africans as being lazy, inarticulate in English, mendacious slave-traders, a deliberate process of “heroification” of Cinque was occurring. These competing stereotypes of black man as supplicating victim versus black man as intelligent, violently forceful agent of his own fate were difficult for Lewis Tappan and his fellow abolitionists to navigate. The images also brought into question the value of “moral suasion” as a tool, especially when white Americans were faced with the reality of a strong, potentially violent African man. The Supreme Court decision freed the African captives, but set no precedent for future cases, and it did not improve the lot of even one other enslaved soul; worse yet, the returned captives found no peace after their hard-won return to Africa, nor did they choose to maintain their Christianity, much to the disappointment of their American hosts. Furthermore, the unhappy postscript of the Africans' resettlement called into question the value of the colonization plans so beloved by activists.
45
Meyer, John M. "“Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company:” the American Performance of Shakespeare and the White-Washing of Political Geography." Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 26, no. 41 (December 30, 2022): 119–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.26.08.
Full textAbstract:
The paper examines the spatial overlap between the disenfranchisement of African Americans and the performance of William Shakespeare’s plays in the United States. In America, William Shakespeare seems to function as a prelapsarian poet, one who wrote before the institutionalization of colonial slavery, and he is therefore a poet able to symbolically function as a ‘public good’ that trumps America’s past associations with slavery. Instead, the modern American performance of Shakespeare emphasizes an idealized strain of human nature: especially when Americans perform Shakespeare outdoors, we tend to imagine ourselves in a primeval woodland, a setting without a history. Therefore, his plays are often performed without controversy—and (bizarrely) on or near sites specifically tied to the enslavement or disenfranchisement of people with African ancestry. New York City’s popular outdoor Shakespeare theater, the Delacorte, is situated just south of the site of Seneca Village, an African American community displaced for the construction of Central Park; Alabama Shakespeare Festival takes place on a former plantation; the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia makes frequent use of a hotel dedicated to a Confederate general; the University of Texas’ Shakespeare at Winedale festival is performed in a barn built with supports carved by slave labor; the Oregon Shakespeare Festival takes place within a state unique for its founding laws dedicated to white supremacy. A historiographical examination of the Texas site reveals how the process of erasure can occur within a ‘progressive’ context, while a survey of Shakespearean performance sites in New York, Alabama, Virginia, and Oregon shows the strength of the unexpected connection between the performance of Shakespeare in America and the subjugation of Black persons, and it raises questions about the unique and utopian assumptions of Shakespearean performance in the United States.
46
Gautier, Amina. "On Post-Racial America in the Age of Obama." Daedalus 140, no. 1 (January 2011): 90–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_00061.
Full textAbstract:
Amina Gautier reflects on her childhood tendency to ask when, not if, there would be a black president. Growing up in the post-civil rights era, she was influenced by knowledge of earlier presidential bids by African Americans as well as references to the idea of a black president in popular culture, including television programs of the 1970s and 1980s that often saw adult characters project the ability to run for office onto black youth. However, Gautier cautions against conflating Barack Obama's historic election to president with the beginning of a “post-racial” era. She uses a personal experience of racial insensitivity to observe the distance we have yet to go before we are truly post-anything.
47
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta, and Robert Cancel. "Introductory Remarks on African Humanities." African Studies Review 29, no. 1 (March 1986): 1–2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0002020600011665.
Full textAbstract:
This issue of the African Studies Review is devoted to research in the African humanities. The appearance of new approaches to the study of literary texts, oral traditions, and the popular arts has inspired us to assemble this collection. Recently, the African humanities have been neglected as an important area in which new empirical and theoretical advances have been made for the study of oral texts, art, and performance.The articles in this collection by Robert Cancel, David Coplan, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, and V. Y. Mudimbe were presented at the Conference on Popular Arts and the Media in Africa held at the University of California, San Diego from May 17-19, 1982. This conference was sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. We would like to thank the Joint Committee for their support of this conference and our initial efforts to develop a research synthesis for the African humanities.This collection begins with V. Y. Mudimbe's commentary on the nature of African art and the limitations of research models used to study it. He questions the role and position of African arts, especially visual arts, in the post-colonial world. He suggests that the time has passed where most of these works can be judged simply as self-enclosed cultural referents, isolated from the effects of the last two hundred years of history. The process of “aesthetization” that he describes is one which, in various transformations, informs each of the papers that follow. When Fanon suggested that to take on a language is to “take on a world,” he foreshadowed the ideas that acknowledge the development of Africa's humanities in a context of cultural interchange with other world traditions. This is not to accept the Victorian pronouncements that credited all African achievements to various forms of Western influence. Rather, it is a movement towards the view that African culture, always fluid and dynamic, has been responsive to all manner of influences, both local and foreign.
48
Blanco F., José, and Raúl J. Vázquez-López. "Introduction." Fashion, Style & Popular Culture 11, no. 2 (July 1, 2024): 253–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00251_2.
Full textAbstract:
This second issue on ‘Latin American/Latinx Fashion’ and popular culture introduces research on the creative output of fashion and style in popular culture through scholarly articles from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. The articles contained here speak to Latin American and Latinx lifestyles and cultural diversity as well as the survival and influence of native, African and European dress in the forging of fashion and style identities. Other topics discussed include ideas of beauty and style, cultural appropriation, shifting values and perceptions of fashion and style, and the development of fashion systems in the region, including emerging markets, designers, brands and venues.
49
Margolis, Emily A. "‘See your spaceport’: Project Apollo and the origins of Kennedy Space Center tourism, 1963–67." European Journal of American Culture 39, no. 3 (September 1, 2020): 249–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00030_1.
Full textAbstract:
This article argues that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) deployed tourism as a key public relations strategy during preparations for Project Apollo. NASA appropriations hearings in 1963 catalysed a national debate over the tangible benefits and costs of sending Americans to the moon. American ambivalence towards the effort alarmed Democratic Representative Olin E. Teague of Texas, chairman of the powerful House Subcommittee on Manned Spaceflight, who understood the correlation between public opinion and congressional appropriations. Inspired by the crowds that congregated on the beaches outside Florida’s John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for each crewed space launch, Teague proposed a tourism programme to encourage public support for NASA’s objectives. Public affairs officers facilitated these programmes at KSC, beginning with a modest information trailer in 1964 and culminating in a Visitor Information Center in 1967 that included an exhibition hall, outdoor displays and depot facilitating escorted bus tours. The space centre quickly became a popular attraction: however, a culture of racial discrimination and intimidation in Brevard County deterred African Americans from participating in space centre tourism. Public programming at KSC – an important legacy of Project Apollo that continues today – was not the panacea Teague and NASA hoped it would be.
50
SCHOFIELD, ANN. "The Returned Yank as Site of Memory in Irish Popular Culture." Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (February 26, 2013): 1175–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875813000030.
Full textAbstract:
This article examines the figure of the Returned Yank in Irish popular culture to explain the contradiction between the Irish preoccupation with the figure of the emigrant who returns and the low number of emigrants who actually do return to their native land. The article argues that the Returned Yank is a lieu de mémoire or site of memory – a concept defined by French historian Pierre Nora as “any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community” and used by scholars of African American and other cultures with particular concerns about memory and history. As a site of memory, the Irish Returned Yank allows the Irish to explore the meaning of massive population loss, the relationship with a diasporic population of overseas Irish, and tensions between urban and rural life. The article also suggests a relationship between Irish national identity and the Returned Yank.