Heroism and the Black Intellectual

Heroism and the Black Intellectual PDF Author: Jerry Gafio Watts
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866237
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Before and after writing Invisible Man, novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison fought to secure a place as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. In this sophisticated analysis of Ellison's cultural politics, Jerry Watts examines the ways in which black artists and thinkers attempt to establish creative intellectual spaces for themselves. Using Ellison as a case study, Watts makes important observations about the role of black intellectuals in America today. Watts argues that black intellectuals have had to navigate their way through a society that both denied them the resources, status, and encouragement available to their white peers and alienated them from the rest of their ethnic group. For Ellison to pursue meaningful intellectual activities in the face of this marginalization demanded creative heroism, a new social and artistic stance that challenges cultural stereotypes. For example, Ellison first created an artistic space for himself by associating with Communist party literary circles, which recognized the value of his writing long before the rest of society was open to his work. In addition, to avoid prescriptive white intellectual norms, Ellison developed his own ideology, which Watts terms the 'blues aesthetic.' Watts's ambitious study reveals a side of Ellison rarely acknowledged, blending careful criticism of art with a wholesale engagement with society.

Heroism and the Black Intellectual

Heroism and the Black Intellectual PDF Author: Jerry Gafio Watts
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866237
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Get Book

Book Description
Before and after writing Invisible Man, novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison fought to secure a place as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. In this sophisticated analysis of Ellison's cultural politics, Jerry Watts examines the ways in which black artists and thinkers attempt to establish creative intellectual spaces for themselves. Using Ellison as a case study, Watts makes important observations about the role of black intellectuals in America today. Watts argues that black intellectuals have had to navigate their way through a society that both denied them the resources, status, and encouragement available to their white peers and alienated them from the rest of their ethnic group. For Ellison to pursue meaningful intellectual activities in the face of this marginalization demanded creative heroism, a new social and artistic stance that challenges cultural stereotypes. For example, Ellison first created an artistic space for himself by associating with Communist party literary circles, which recognized the value of his writing long before the rest of society was open to his work. In addition, to avoid prescriptive white intellectual norms, Ellison developed his own ideology, which Watts terms the 'blues aesthetic.' Watts's ambitious study reveals a side of Ellison rarely acknowledged, blending careful criticism of art with a wholesale engagement with society.

The Need for Heroes

The Need for Heroes PDF Author: Arthur Alfonso Schomburg
Publisher: Editora Funmilayo Publishing
ISBN: 9781999675691
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Beyond the Stereotypes: Celebrating Black Heroes Through Powerful Essays For too long, Black heroes have been relegated to the margins of history, their stories untold or overshadowed by a narrow narrative. This groundbreaking anthology helps shatter that silence. The Need for Heroes brings together a chorus of brilliant Black voices from Brazil and the USA-scholars, activists, and leaders who examine the lives and legacies of Black heroes from all walks of life. In these pages, William Cooper Nell, George Washington Williams, Manuel R. Querino, Booker T. Washington, Carter G. Woodson, J. A. Rogers, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Elizabeth Ross Haynes explore the complexities of Black heroism, delving beyond one-dimensional portrayals to reveal a rich tapestry of achievements. Gain a deeper understanding of Black history and culture through these insightful and inspiring essays, including a foreword by the bibliophile and Black vindicationist Arthur Schomburg and an afterword by the Brazilian historian Flávio Gomes. The Need for Heroes is a must-read for anyone seeking a more complete picture of heroism, one that reflects the full spectrum of human experience. It is a celebration of Black excellence, and a powerful testament to the enduring human spirit. From the editor and publisher of Manuel Querino (1851-1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism (2021)

Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women

Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women PDF Author: Mia E. Bay
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Despite recent advances in the study of black thought, black women intellectuals remain often neglected. This collection of essays by fifteen scholars of history and literature establishes black women's places in intellectual history by engaging the work of writers, educators, activists, religious leaders, and social reformers in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. Dedicated to recovering the contributions of thinkers marginalized by both their race and their gender, these essays uncover the work of unconventional intellectuals, both formally educated and self-taught, and explore the broad community of ideas in which their work participated. The end result is a field-defining and innovative volume that addresses topics ranging from religion and slavery to the politicized and gendered reappraisal of the black female body in contemporary culture. Contributors are Mia E. Bay, Judith Byfield, Alexandra Cornelius, Thadious Davis, Corinne T. Field, Arlette Frund, Kaiama L. Glover, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, Natasha Lightfoot, Sherie Randolph, Barbara D. Savage, Jon Sensbach, Maboula Soumahoro, and Cheryl Wall.

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual PDF Author: Harold Cruse
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590171356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
Published in 1967, as the early triumphs of the Civil Rights movement yielded to increasing frustration and violence, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual electrified a generation of activists and intellectuals. The product of a lifetime of struggle and reflection, Cruse's book is a singular amalgam of cultural history, passionate disputation, and deeply considered analysis of the relationship between American blacks and American society. Reviewing black intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s, Cruse discusses the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits) of figures such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing that their work was marked by a failure to understand the specifically American character of racism in the United States. This supplies the background to Cruse's controversial critique of both integrationism and black nationalism and to his claim that black Americans will only assume a just place within American life when they develop their own distinctive centers of cultural and economic influence. For Cruse's most important accomplishment may well be his rejection of the clichés of the melting pot in favor of a vision of Americanness as an arena of necessary and vital contention, an open and ongoing struggle.

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka PDF Author: Jerry Watts
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814793738
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
In a chapter sure to prove controversial, Watts links Baraka's famous misogyny to an attempt to bury his own homosexual past."--BOOK JACKET.

Characters of Blood

Characters of Blood PDF Author: Celeste-Marie Bernier
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813933242
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
Across the centuries, the acts and arts of black heroism have inspired a provocative, experimental, and self-reflexive intellectual, political, and aesthetic tradition. In Characters of Blood, Celeste-Marie Bernier illuminates the ways in which six iconic men and women--Toussaint Louverture, Nathaniel Turner, Sengbe Pieh, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman--challenged the dominant conceptualizations of their histories and played a key role in the construction of an alternative visual and textual archive. While these figures have survived as symbolic touchstones, Bernier contends that scholars have yet to do justice to their complex bodies of work or their multifaceted lives. Adopting a comparative and transatlantic approach to her subjects' remarkable life stories, the author analyzes a wealth of creative work--from literature, drama, and art to public monuments, religious tracts, and historical narratives--to show how it represents enslaved heroism throughout the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. In mapping this black diasporic tradition of resistance, Bernier intends not only to reveal the limitations and distortions on record but also to complicate the definitions of black heroism that have been restricted by ideological boundaries between heroic and anti-heroic sites and sights of struggle.

Civil Rights Journal

Civil Rights Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered PDF Author: Jerry G. Watts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135964068
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
A collection of essays looking back at the influence of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, first published 35 years ago.

Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered

Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered PDF Author: Jerry G. Watts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113596405X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Thirty-five years after its initial publication, Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," remains a foundational work in Afro-American Studies and American Cultural Studies. Published during a highly contentious moment in Afro-American political life, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" was one of the very few texts that treated Afro-American intellectuals as intellectually significant. The essays contained in Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered" are collectively a testimony to the continuing significance of this polemical call to arms for black intellectuals. Each scholar featured in this book has chosen to discuss specific arguments made by Cruse. While some have utilized Cruse's arguments to launch broader discussions of various issues pertaining to Afro-American intellectuals, and others have contributed discussions on intellectual issues completely ignored by Cruse, all hope to pay homage to a thinker worthy of continual reconsideration.

Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America

Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America PDF Author: Brian D. Behnken
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496813669
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Contributions by Tunde Adeleke, Brian D. Behnken, Minkah Makalani, Benita Roth, Gregory D. Smithers, Simon Wendt, and Danielle L. Wiggins Black intellectualism has been misunderstood by the American public and by scholars for generations. Historically maligned by their peers and by the lay public as inauthentic or illegitimate, black intellectuals have found their work misused, ignored, or discarded. Black intellectuals have also been reductively placed into one or two main categories: they are usually deemed liberal or, less frequently, as conservative. The contributors to this volume explore several prominent intellectuals, from left-leaning leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois to conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, from well-known black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins to Marxists like Claudia Jones, to underscore the variety of black intellectual thought in the United States. Contributors also situate the development of the lines of black intellectual thought within the broader history from which these trends emerged. The result gathers essays that offer entry into a host of rich intellectual traditions.