Social Science : African-American Studies

In African-American Servitude and Historical Imaginings Margaret Jordan initiates a new way of looking at the African American presence in American literature. Twentieth-century retrospective fiction is the site for this compelling investigation about how African American servants and slaves have enormous utility as cultural artifacts, objects to be acted upon, agents in place, or agents provocateurs. Jordan argues that those who even those seemingly innocuous, infrequently visible, or silent servants are vehicles through which history, culture and social values and practices are cultivated and perpetuated, challenged and destabllized. Jordan demonstrates how African American servants and servitude are strategically deployed and engaged in ways which encourage a rethinking of the past. She examines the ideological underpinnings of retrospective fiction by writers who are clearly social theorists and philosophers. Jordan contends that they do not read or misread history, they imagine history as meditations on social realties and reconstruct the past as a way to confront the present. more...

Price: $75.00

In order to illuminate transformations in African-American urban life, this book brings together urban history, contemporary social, cultural and policy research and comparative perspectives on race, ethnicity and nationality within and across national boundaries. more...

Price: $105.00

This book examines the quilts, ceramics, paintings, sculpture, installations, assemblages, daguerreotypes, photography and performance art produced by African American artists over a two hundred year period. The author draws on archaeological discoveries and unpublished archival materials to recover the lost legacies of artists living and working in the United States. As the first critical study to provide in-depth case studies of twenty artists, this book introduces readers to works created in response to the Middle Passage, Atlantic slavery, lynching, racism, segregation, and the fight for civil rights. Bernier examines little-discussed panoramas, murals, portraits, textile designs, collages and mixed-media installations to get to grips with key motifs and formal issues within African American art history. Working within this tradition, artists experiment with cutting edge techniques and alternative subject-matter to undermine racist iconography and endorse a new visual language. They push thematic and formal boundaries to create powerful narratives and epic histories of creativity, labour, discrimination, suffering and resistance. By providing close readings of works by artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, William Edmondson, Howardena Pindell, Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Betye Saar, Horace Pippin and Kara Walker, this book sheds new light on the thematic and formal complexities of an African American art tradition which still remains largely shrouded in mystery. Includes 16 colour photographs. more...

Price: $33.99

This concise volume explores the evolution and current status of African American political action. Focusing on distinct types of activity, it charts the unique development of African Americans as they progressed from slaves to citizens to wielders of evergrowing influence. more...

Price: $60.00

This is a chronicle of the endeavours of African Americans who fought for their country, recounting their stories, their bravery and their contributions. It aims to put a human face on this neglected area of history. more...

Price: $185.00