Black Popular Culture Research Papers (original) (raw)

2025

Whether it is in the intellectual world or in the cultural world, most human beings are not able to rethink how they think. The ability to do that is a sign of tremendous blessing and tremendous gifts You have many examples of people like... more

2025

Nous vivons une époque critique-une époque qui exige une clarté totale de l'esprit, une force de volonté inébranlable et une unité de vision chez tous les Africains et descendants d'Afrique à travers le monde. Notre CEADA/ECAAD-Condition Existentielle des Africains et des Descendants Africains-doit désormais devenir la priorité absolue de chaque leader, penseur, activiste, artiste, entrepreneur, éducateur et ancien de nos communautés.

2025, Current Psychology

Black American commercial rap videos have been criticized for portraying stereotypical gender ideals concerning gender-appropriate behaviors, appearances and attractivity, and heterosexual relationships. We explored to what extent African American college students reject (REJ) and value (VAL) gender ideals in these videos. Additionally, we examined the connections between the perception of these ideals and students’ actual and ought self-images (i.e., attributes they believe they possess and those they perceive others in their social environment expect them to have). We focused on the self-image domains: gender-appropriate behavior, physical appearance, and mate desirability. Social Comparison Theory and Social Discrepancy Theory provided sensitizing concepts for reflexive thematic analyses of focus group discussions on music videos with eight college women and seven college men. Among women the themes were: Black women behave like sexual freaks (REJ); attractive women are exotic-looking (REJ) and naturally thick (VAL); and desirable women mates are beautiful, confident and toned-down (VAL). The themes among men were: Men are playas (REJ) and prioritize making it financially big (VAL); attractive men look fashionable and rich (VAL); and desirable men mates are emotionally distant (REJ) and provide for their partners (VAL). Same-gender comparisons of these ideals with the actual self resulted in both positive and negative self-images and emotions. The comparison of these ideals with the ought self-image resulted in negative emotions. These results demonstrate that portrayed ideals in music videos are relevant to the formation and evaluation of the self during emerging adulthood. Implications for future research and intervention programs are discussed.

2025, Navigating Black Privilege Across the Globe

From the Whispers of our Ancestors Come the Strength of Our Black Privilege
Black Privilege challenges the pervasive narrative that Black identity is rooted in deficit or lack. Instead, it asserts the profound richness and transformative power of Black cultural contributions, both in the United States and globally. This perspective invites a paradigm shift from viewing Blackness through the lens of oppression alone to recognizing it as a wellspring of privilege, resilience, and creativity that has continually shaped the world. The concept of Black Privilege acknowledges the depth of Black culture's influence, from its ancestral traditions to its contemporary innovations. Black music, art, literature, activism, and spirituality have not only resisted systemic oppression but have also gifted the world with enduring legacies of hope, beauty, and resistance. This privilege lies in the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual wealth that stems from surviving and thriving against all odds. It is a privilege not in the sense of unearned advantages but as an inheritance of strength, wisdom, and communal solidarity.

2025, Rev. antropol. (São Paulo, Online) | v. 64 n. 3

This article presents part of the research material from my doctoral thesis, developed alongside the kilombola community of Morada da Paz, also known as Territory of Mãe Preta. The community is located in the rural area of Triunfo, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and it is formed mostly by black women. It is characterized for being a spiritual community that follows the guidance of a "black old woman" (preta-velha), Mãe Preta, and an exu, Seu Sete. It was with the eldest women in the community, known as Yas and Baba, that I learned about the concept of occupation. The purpose here is to recover this concept, presenting its singularities in relation to other understandings of occupation. Finally, I argue that, as the indigenous "resumption" and the "reclaim" of the American neopagan witches, the occupation elaborated by Morada is also a "recipe of resistance" against the colonial and capitalist attacks.

2025

This research examines the cognitive abilities of hip-hop artists through an Africana phenomenological lens, challenging traditional Western conceptualizations of intelligence. The study analyzes existing literature on musicianship, cognitive function, and cultural expression to understand how rap artists demonstrate complex intellectual capacities that resist conventional measurement. Through systematic review of neurological, psychological, and educational research, this investigation reveals that hip-hop practitioners exhibit sophisticated cognitive skills including enhanced working memory, linguistic dexterity, and cultural intelligence. The findings suggest that traditional intelligence quotient assessments fail to capture the multidimensional intellectual contributions of African diasporic communities, particularly in creative and improvisational contexts. This research contributes to broader discussions about decolonizing psychology and recognizing diverse forms of human intelligence.

2025

It is a well-established proposition that a culture of violence and misogyny prevails in commercial hip hop. As Tricia Rose notes in 'Hip Hop Wars', this “commercial juggernaut” has drained a once-vibrant genre by catering to America’s... more

2025, International social science and humanities studies

This work argues that so-called Black people integrated White supremacy via the universality and ontology of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, and as such their so-called Black Modernity, in the Atlantic especially, is itself a form of White supremacy. In other words, Black folks in America and the diaspora, following their interpellation, embourgeoisement, and integration into the universality and ontology of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism by their White colonial slave masters via slavery became Black Protestant agents of White supremacy, i.e., Black/White supremacists. They (the Black American, especially) are now used by the upper-class of white owners and high-level executives in an American global mercantilism that is tantamount to the colonial project of the Europeans to perpetuate White supremacy and the inferiority of people of color around the world via their form of labor and labor power in the universality and ontology of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

2025, Збірник матеріалів міжнародної науково-практичної конференції "Мова та література в мультикультурному дискурсі (пам'яті професора Олександра Галича)

In our research, we analyzed the legendary crime novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo on ethical matters. Mario Puzo's work went on to become one of the bestselling fiction books of all time, selling almost 21 million copies worldwide [1]. The terms "ethical" and "moral" we decided to use interchangeably writing our article, even though in some examples "right" or "wrong" may be more of a personal concern, in others more of a non-personal concern (e.g. the Corleone family's, society's) that can certainly intersect and vice versa, to be at odds with each other.

2025

co l CNP q Conselho hisciormitle Desenvolvimento Omiti,. o ToenoláDims /74)cle s e significaç'be O livro de Antônio Bispo faz parte da coleção de obras publicadas pelo INCT de Inclusão e assinadas por mestres e mestras das comunidades tradicionais brasileiras -indígenas, afro-brasileiras, e das culturas populares. Líder quilombola pertencente a uma comunidade rural do Piauí, Bispo foi professor da disciplina Encontro de Saberes na UnB em 2012 e 2013 e pertence à rede de mestres docentes do Instituto. Seu livro traz uma perspectiva nova no campo de ensaios de interpretação do Brasil: a visão dos quilombos, comunidades de negros que se rebelaram contra a violência do regime escravo e se tornaram historicamente um símbolo maior da luta dos povos do Novo Mundo contra a escravidão e o racismo e pela afirmação de comunidades auto-sustentáveis. Com uma narrativa concisa, Bispo constrói um argumento denso sobre a história das resistências, rebeliões, insurgências e experiências concretas de construção de comunidades livres e auto-sustentáveis, como Palmares, Canudos, Caldeirões e Pau de Colher, projetando seus ideais para os dias de hoje. Desenvolvendo um conceito amplo de colonização, o autor contesta o atual modelo ecocida e desumano de desenvolvimento econômico ao qual o Brasil, junto com os demais países da América Latina, se rendeu completamente. Em contraposição a esse projeto de sociedade autodestrutiva, passa a propor uma alternativa civilizatória baseada na biointeração, comum aos quilombos, aos terreiros das religiões de matriz africana e à capoeira. É com essa síntese de pensamento crítico e libertário, e uma disponibilidade de mestre ao ensinar um saber profundo e essencial para a vida (incluindo a alegria, transparente no seu ensaio) que Bispo vem somar a sua escrita quilombista à galeria da intelectualidade brasileira atual.

2025, Curriculum Inquiry

In order to develop critical worldviews and confidence in their
identities, Black girls should make meaning of their lived and
schooling experiences. Critical conversation spaces (CCSs; Carter
Andrews et al., 2019) centering reflection on gender and race pro-
vide environments for this meaning-making. Further, CCS curricular
design should account for girls’ pre-existing knowledge and desires;
likewise, CCS curricular revisions should incorporate their experi-
ences and eventual self-described outcomes (Nyachae, 2016;
Nyachae & Ohito, 2023). To evolve past adult-driven prescription,
proscription, and prioritizations, we asked participants to share
their reflections on the CCS pilot and their desired revisions. We
sought to understand the sociopolitical ideations that arise among
Black girls engaging with an in-school, CCS curriculum designed to
encourage their critical consciousness of interlocking systems of
oppression in their own experiences. Employing girls of color’s pos-
itive youth development (Clonan-Roy et al., 2016) as our theoreti-
cal framework, we analyzed individual interviews and focus group
data using Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (RADaR). In
this article, we explore themes relating to Black girls’ intersectional
awareness (diversity and multiplicity of Blackness) and their resis-
tance and resilience (self-care and intragroup diversity) as they
developed throughout the CCS curriculum. We close by advocating
for the proliferation of Black girl-centric pedagogies and offering
future directions for CCS research.

2025, Neosis African Journal of Contemporary Trends in Religion and Society

This paper examines the formative praxis and structures within Akan indigenous leadership formation. Particularly, the study looks at the inherent formation phases of indigenous leaders among the Akan of Ghana prior to their selection. This study which is qualitative in nature relied on field data (mainly interviews and participant observation) and was supported by published materials such as books and journal articles in its information gathering. The study reveals that leadership formation among the Akan of Ghana is structured in a position where the home becomes the primary context for nurturing leaders in desirable knowledge, values, and behavioural patterns that are required for various indigenous leadership positions. The paper concludes that traditional values and ideas must have a bearing on modern Ghanaian leadership formation not necessarily to glorify those values and ideas, but to point out their worthiness to provide people with the values, ideas, and institutions that may be needed for contemporary leadership through objective scrutiny.

2025

Table 5.2 Research Questions and Major Properties Research Questions Major Properties How is popular culture reflected in the perceptions of the Black superheroine? *HAIR *CHARACTER WEIGHT/HEIGHT *POWERS *SECRET IDENTITY How do African American male and female college students imagine the Black superheroine? *WEAKNESS *SIDEKICK *LOVE INTEREST *MAIN ENEMY/ENEMIES *CHARACTER BACKGROUND *SUPERHERO BEGINNINGS *HIDEOUT/GETAWAY How do racial and gender stereotypes in popular culture shape the creation of the Black superheroine? *BODY TYPE *SKIN COMPLEXION *COSTUME Table 5.2 Research Questions and Major Properties Research Questions Major Properties How is popular culture reflected in the perceptions of the Black superheroine? *HAIR *CHARACTER WEIGHT/HEIGHT *POWERS *SECRET IDENTITY How do African American male and female college students imagine the Black superheroine? *WEAKNESS *SIDEKICK *LOVE INTEREST *MAIN ENEMY/ENEMIES *CHARACTER BACKGROUND *SUPERHERO BEGINNINGS *HIDEOUT/GETAWAY How do racial and gender stereotypes in popular culture shape the creation of the Black superheroine? *BODY TYPE *SKIN COMPLEXION *COSTUME

2025, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

Centrally drawing upon the work of Calvin Warren and Sylvia Wynter, I perform a meta-criticism of critical reviews of Barry Jenkins’ 2016 film Moonlight to explore two related concepts: the myth of being and the darkfaggot. I argue these reviews unwittingly adhere to the myth of being, an ideological structure instituting subjects as sovereign co-identifying beings contra the non-be-longing of the ontologically unsovereign black. These reviews by black critics inherit the myth of being’s differentiating imperative such that the reassignment of a queer identity to Moonlight functions to reproduce an intramural structural position of otherness I term the “darkfaggot.” The darkfaggot is an idea of redoubled non-be-longing—that is, non-be-longing and non-existence—whose function is to mystify the black’s starvation of being that conditions the satiation of the human subject’s hunger to be-long. In the end, I decipher Moonlight’s non-answer of the “identity question” as an implicit argument about the impossibility of black be-longing, and thus black queerness as a mode of be-longing, within totalizing conditions of dispossessive
violence.

2025

Popular culture has contributed to forming a distinct set of archetypes for Asian Americans, though many questions surrounding Asian identity in media have gone largely unanswered. Vijay Prashad has researched the facets of Bruce Lee’s life and career, while scholars like Janine Young Kim have discussed the role of Asian Americans in the civil rights movement, though there is a narrow range of scholarship about Asian Americans in film as a whole. I examine the portrayal and inclusion of Asian actors in Western cinema, with a focus on the United States, from the 1920s to the 1970s. Asian characters were added to films to provide an exotic or dangerous element, and the inclusion of Asian women like actress Anna May Wong, who rose to prominence in the 1920s, filled the archetype of the sexualized woman who hindered the white protagonist. This typecasting persisted and was heightened to a level of explicit prejudice in the years surrounding World War II, which led to demeaning images of...

2025, International Journal of Asian and African Studies

The "Pop the Balloon or Find Love" show has rapidly captured global attention, establishing itself as a notable expression of contemporary popular culture. This article critically examines the emergence of "Pop the Balloon or Find Love" as a contemporary Black popular culture, highlighting its dual role as both a platform for affirming Black love and self-expression, and a problematic reinforcement of social norms, particularly as depicted in Nons Miraj's "Hunt Game Show: Pop the Balloon to Find Love," which serves as the central focus of this analysis. Drawing upon cultivation theory and social learning theory, the study assesses the show's potential social influences and considers its broader implications for the global image of Nigerians. While recognizing the show's ability to foster meaningful cultural exchanges and genuine interpersonal connections, the article critically engages with its promotion of harmful behaviors such as body consumption, verbal aggression, and materialism. In response, this study offers carefully considered recommendations for reform, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach that prioritizes ethical representation alongside entertainment. Ultimately, this research contributes to ongoing discussions about the intersections of media, identity formation, cultural representation, and social responsibility.

2025

Dr. Cross, thank you for guiding me on this path. You will always be my academic mother. You fussed at me yet faithfully guided me through this doctoral journey. You took a girl with no academic foundation and helped shape her into a woman capable of reaching incredible heights. To my committee members, Dr. Nordstrom, thank you for listening when I needed to be heard and encouraging me when I doubted my ability to reach this dream. Dr. Benson, thank you for being a tremendous inspiration. Watching a young Black woman pursue and achieve her goals reminded me to keep reaching for mine. To the many people who formed my support system, I will never forget how you held me up. Special thanks to my Pappin family-you encouraged and supported me even when I was too busy writing to visit. To Jerie, thank you for being there for every significant milestone in my life. To Xzenie and Amelia, your daily texts kept me grounded. To Darly and Monica, thank you for helping me survive the stress. Moreover, to all the beautiful connections I made in the doctoral program, your calls, texts, and TEAMS meetings pulled me through. Thank you to my QUIC research community for reminding me this was possible every time I started to forget.

2025, Participation in American Culture and Society

A seminar I taught on Black feminist and Womanist theory this past semester offered ample opportunity to practice what I had called in a talk last year, "teaching towards Calvin Warren's nonmetaphysical historiography." My intention was to disrupt: to break the pattern of participating in white historiography, rendering moot the practice of teaching anti-Black violence as ontology in the field of history. I was not prepared, however, for the seminar to become a meditation on love.

2025, Anthropology of the Middle East

This article reviews orientalists' misrepresentations regarding the Orient and Islam. Many Western scholars have touched on the differences between Westerners and Arab and Muslim Orientals. Orientalists have also drawn analogies between Christianity and Islam. In his book Orientalism, Said depicted the negative attitude of some orientalists' texts towards Islam and the Orient. However, there are also literary works about the Orient in Western culture that employ objective criteria. The vision of Islam is analysed according to the orientalists whose names are mentioned in the book of Orientalism. However, other texts present greater equanimity. That vision is still present nowadays in the Western mindset towards the Middle Eastern situation. Said's approaches explain the issue brilliantly, and could provide some clues for solutions.

2025, Publicdo em Festas de pretos [recurso eletrônico] : celebrações, formas de expressão e algazarras da população negra no Brasil / organização : Mário Ribeiro, Valéria Costa. – Recife : Ed. UFPE, 2024.

As festas são manifestações coletivas dos sentimentos dos povos, e esses sentimentos são estão conectados com a vida de toda uma comunidade e podem ser encontradas desde os mais antigos aglomerados humanos, e em todos os espaços colonizados, pelos gestos pelas ações dos homens e das mulheres, formadores da sociedade, criadores e mantenedores de suas culturas. As festas são sempre um reflexo da cultura, um momento de afirmação do grupo, o que implica dizer que elas estão prenhas de razões e finalidades políticas. As festas populares, as festas de rua podem ser entendidas, nas sociedades contemporâneas, como momentos especiais para os grupos que invisivelmente as formam. Ser invisível socialmente, contudo, não é algo restrito aos tempos contemporâneos, pois as sociedade antigas também estiveram carregadas de humanos invisíveis. O que se pode compreender a partir dos estudos historiográficos é que, apenas recentemente, tem-se dedicado a estudar as sociedades para além do que está salvo nos arquivos oficiais. 2 A busca pela memória e história das população ágrafas ou sem possibilidades de produzir arquivos, veio promover estudos e organização de uma História Oral, quase na linha etnográfica, para tornar essas tradições parte do acervo cultural da nação. Fazer-se sentir e sentir-se parte da sociedade, afirmar sua presença na sociedade, marcar sua presença, afirmar sua importância na formação social. Esse sentimento pode ser encontrado em todos as sociedades, nos grupos que foram postos à margem, foram marginalizados, desde a formação primeva da sociedade. Entre nós tal

2025, Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal

The use of language in the structure of literary works can be something so unique. Language is increasingly developing and does not die when it is in the structure of literary works, because literary works are unique by producing various meaning. This study aimed to extract the signs and their significations present in the selected songs of Bob Dylan using document analysis. Specifically, it also sought the stylistic or linguistic devices used to present or portray the sign in the songs under study and the central theme or the overall message of the songs. Each of the sign involved in the songs has a specific role to portray and were carefully chosen by the author to produce and convey his message across to his listeners. all the signs help to convey and portray the different messages and themes to understand the social representation of Bob Dylan toward reality. The signs and their respective signification allowed the listeners to understand the lyrics and the overall meaning of the song. The use of stylistic or linguistic devices are very evident in the songs under study. The devices used were a great tool to layout and express Dylan's opinions and criticisms about the different societal topics through his songs' lyrics. The three songs under study all tackles social criticism but each of the songs have different central theme and overall message. Each of the linguistic and stylistic devices presented the signs in each of the songs to correspond to the overall messages of the songs. Each of the signs used by Dylan and how he presented them using a specific device made it more encouraging to the listener to make connections to the deeper messages and meaning of his works creating a connection and relative memorable experience.

2025

No es así. No puede ser así. Sin embargo, sí es así Esa, la constante negación del ser humano, esa que lo compone, esa que lo vuelve un autómata discursivo, aquél que está atrapado en una burbuja y no sabe poncharla, ¿será que no quiere o no puede? Es esa, la misma de siempre, su constante negación normativa y, la misma, es esa que lo llevará a su destrucción.

2025, Philosophy Study

This work provides a descriptive analysis of the so-called Black American community whose practical consciousness is a result of adopting, and reacting to, both white values and discriminatory terms to constitute their practical activities and so-called cultural identity. Outside of the practices associated with these values and discriminatory terms, there is no sui generis Black American identity and community with its own form of system and social integration that is different from, or diametrically opposes, the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of their white counterparts, which would emerge out of that relationship.

2025, TEXTILE - Cloth and Culture

This paper examines Harriet Powers’ Pictorial Quilt II as an alternative form of storytelling that reflects the complex experience of African Americans in the 19th century. Through a detailed analysis of the quilt’s materiality, visual elements, and cultural context, the paper situates Powers’ work within African American quiltmaking traditions, emphasizing its role in resistance to racialization and the aftermath of slavery. The paper argues that the quilt serves as an anagrammatic medium, rearranging stories and symbols to create new meanings that transcend conventional Western narrative frameworks. Powers’ use of biblical stories and natural phenomena reflects both African spiritual traditions and Christian theology, offering a polyphonic commentary on the trauma of slavery and ongoing racial oppression. The act of quiltmaking is framed as both a spiritual and intellectual process of empowerment, resilience, and resistance. This study highlights Powers’ role not just as an artist but as a storyteller and creator of a visual narrative that addresses the paradoxes of Black existence in post-slavery America.

2025, Future Flow

Abstract
Part of Chapter 6, Flow 6 Too Hip to be Cool!!!! I had arranged salons at my homes in various countries over the years, in London, Paris, Zagreb, all very Avant-Garde, Beat or Fluxus style, but the panels, gatherings, and shows, I created at the ...in Antwerp, and later in Austin, which ultimately became Frontline Panels, was inspired by a genuinely crazy night in September 1996 in The Hague, Netherlands. Assembled were perhaps ten of the hippest performers from the literary, music, technology, and film world, all congregated in the lobby of our hotel after the Grossing Border Festival, run by my close friend Louis Behre. At around two a.m. the atmosphere was magical, Michael Gira (Swans frontman, then with Angels of Light and formidable writer of gems such as The Consumer), whom I was managing at the time, was in a literary duel with Irving Welsh (of Trainspotting fame). Dutch author Karen Spaink was creating a freestyle poetry piece in unison with Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. Belgian artist Rude Truve was drawing a mystical future vision of post-postmodernist enlightenment, at the feet of "Lust and Leather" film director lan Kerkoff. Scottish writer James Kelman (who won the Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late It Is), was verbally brawling with John Giorno (writer of You Got to Burn to Shine, originator of performance poetry, and archivist of the history of spoken word through his record series Giorno Poetry Systems). John was an intimate companion of William Burroughs and Andy Warhol, who later became part of our group that created the Burroughs Compendium “Calling the Toads” published by Fringecore Publishing. DJ Spooky, by then the doyen of electronica and all things cool, was tapping out a breakbeat in his mind with Tinderstick’s Frontman Stuart Staples. All the while I was mixing and meshing a concerto of audio-visual frequencies in my head from the disconnects and later I created a spoken word piece titled “Fragments…” I felt like a Circus Master. At 6 a.m., Michael Gira and I were joined by Mr. America Henry Rollins, ex-Black Flag frontman, writer (Coffee House Blues, Now Watch Him Die), and publisher - for a parting hug. Unbeknownst to me, this albeit spontaneous, serendipitous, and renegade gathering led to my ten-year association with my vanity project/company Fringecore, a life of hipness at least by John Leyland, author of The History of Hip criteria. and my first book Future Frequencies in 2004. Nearly 10 years later, as my second book Future Flow hits the streets, I feel the Pegasus of techno-hipness has carried me to a new high.

2025, The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IFJR)

The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC), a registered charity with a reported income of £2,177,698 for the financial year ending 31 August 2023, occupies a significant position within the UK’s evangelical landscape. Despite its substantial financial capacity, the FIEC’s decision to assign Justin Gill as both IT Manager and Intercultural Ministry Advisor raises critical questions about its commitment to diversity, representation, and structural equity. This dual role suggests a potential misalignment between the organisation’s financial resources and its prioritisation of intercultural ministry, a concern that warrants closer scrutiny.
This paper examines whether the FIEC’s financial allocation reflects a genuine commitment to encouraging inclusivity or whether its approach inadvertently perpetuates tokenism. By analysing the organisation’s leadership structures, financial priorities, and comparative practices within the faith-based sector, this inquiry seeks to highlight areas for improvement and propose actionable recommendations for meaningful reform.

2025, JEMF Quarterly

Review of David Evans, Tommy Johnson

2025

Throughout cinema history, ad men, psychologists, and film theorists alike have conceived of movies as having therapeutic value. In some formulations, films provide grounds for pleasurable cognitive alignment; in others, opportunities for secondary or primary identification replicating the Lacanian mirror phase, and in still others simply a cool, welcoming space of relaxation and entertainment. Black film critics and theorists, however, construct "the movies" as a far less hospitable space-one of negative reflection and segregation-the screen reflecting a caricatured mirror with the dimensions and shape of Kara Walker-esque grotesquerie. James Baldwin's caustic The Devil Finds Work, for example, sees cinema not as therapeutic but quite the opposite-as an escape valve for whites pursuing insidious neglect of Black citizens-a kind of false therapy that allows oppression to continue and whiteness to remain ascendant. For Baldwin, a profound skeptic about the possibilities of Black flourishing in the United States, Hollywood's saccharine, imagineered images represented among the deepest signifiers of irony and hopelessness. This paper will explore the possibility of Black flourishing through acts of interrogative film criticism, focusing on the work and writing of an underheralded Black woman film critic, Almena Davis (later Lomax). 1 Davis, editor of the 1940s and 1950s Black newspaper the Los Angeles Tribune, predicted Baldwin's acerbic critique of Hollywood's undermining of Black life. In a review that seems to foretell Baldwin's "On Being White. .. and other lies, " she found Imitation of Life (1959) a "fiendish device to injure the pride of colored people in being themselves. .. and an equally fiendish plot to curse every white child with a complex of innate color superiority, as if the racial superiority

2025, Universal Write Publications

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN THE ERAS OF HIP-HOP: Rhetorical Symbolisms of Purpose, Power, and Passion P. Thandi Hicks Harper, PhD Abstract This article draws from a commissioned lecture on the relationship between the purpose, power and... more

2025, JEMF Quarterly

Review of John Fahey, Charley Patton. This book was derived from Fahey's MA thesis on Patton (d. 1934), a foundational figure in the Mississippi Delta blues.

2025, Electronic Workshops in Computing

This paper introduces Afrobits, an interactive installation about African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Its main aim is to bring to light invisible stories hidden behind geographic epistemologies. The installation highlights the contribution that African cultures had on the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the world, such as popular music. Although it covers diverse countries, we focused on the Americas, placing emphasis on Latin-America as the biopolitical space that enabled the integration of native cultures with African peoples. As this project involved web scientists, graphic designers, historians, digital humanists and artists, we also discuss the benefits of interdisciplinary research; contributions from University researchers for the development of storytelling projects for the Cultural Heritage sector; and the implementation of complex technologies and research methods. Interaction design. Digital humanities. History. Cultural heritage. Museum studies.

2025

Conference paper delivered at Minimalism Extended: The Seventh International Conference on Minimalist Music, Cardiff University, 22 - 25 August 2019

2025, Sower Media

This paper examines the employment challenges encountered by Black Christian pastors in the United Kingdom, focusing on structural barriers and institutional racism within religious institutions. Despite the growth of Black Majority Churches and increasing diversity among congregations, Black clergy often face significant obstacles in recruitment, retention, and progression within mainstream denominations. The study analyses available statistics, reports, and scholarly articles to shed light on these disparities and offers recommendations for encouraging inclusivity and equity in religious leadership.

2025, POP PORNO Una Sporca Storia della Musica Dal Dirty Blues al Porno Rap

"Pop Porno una Sporca Storia della Musica Dal Dirty Blues al Porno Rap" intende tracciare una nuova storia della sessualità indagando su come questa è stata rappresentata nel corso del tempo nell'ambito della musica popolare .

2024, The Journal of Aesthetic Education

“Black art” is often understood as being inherently political. In examining two major Black arts movements, the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement, many of the works attributed to those periods fit the description of “political art” but not all of them. Black art movements are not defined exclusively by similar styles or methodologies, like Expressionism or Surrealism, either. Instead, Black art movements are complex movements that blend social, political, and aesthetic criteria. In this article, I list seven conditions that I take to be jointly sufficient for a Black art movement to be signified as such. In this assertion, I also argue that this current era, paralleling the Black Lives Matter movement, is worthy of Black art movement signification, if we update the mediums by which the conditions are met in the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement.

2024

the legendary goddess of Black consciousness in America, the tireless sentinel of Black poetry and identity, has left us. She has departed, leaving behind a magnificent legacy of love and resistance, a treasury of tireless words that celebrate the culture of defiance. Through her entire life, she honored the spirit of revolution and resistance, wielding only the power of words and letters. Her writings, time and again, ignited the flames of rebellion across America, celebrating the dignity of Black consciousness and the humanity of all marginalized peoples.

2024, Saarc journal of social sciences

This work offers a hermeneutical analysis and framework for understanding the emerging acceptance of homosexuality among a few Black American Protestant church leaders and congregants in the age of neoliberal globalization under American hegemony. I argue that the White Christian Western world ended Black history as a distinct form of system and social integration unfolding onto the world by integrating them into the dialectic of their (neo) liberal (Protestant) capitalist means and modes of production. This process, contemporarily, in postindustrial America, has led to the queerification and feminization of the so-called Black American (fictitious) community. As such, the emerging phenomenon of embracing homosexuality as church doctrine is related to black relations to the means and modes of production, which embraces and reinforces the identity politics and diversified consumerism by which the superstructure of the postindustrial economic base of the American service economy is constituted.

2024, Quarterly Journal of Speech

As a contested site of struggle, Black women rappers’ use of hiphop
and rap music provides them with a platform to affirm their
sexual autonomy amid gratuitous sexual violence. Sexual agency
is central to Black abolition. To imagine futures beyond violence
necessitates that we view Black women’s sexual rebellion as an
abolitionist praxis amidst precarity. In this essay, I introduce
subversive reclamation—a critical reading posture and
experimental approach—to explore the imaginative potential of
Black pussy talk as a rhetorical strategy employed in Black
women’s contemporary stripper rap. I situate this exploration of
Black women’s pussy talk within and in conversation with Black
queer feminist (BQF) theories of sex and sexuality as well as
pleasure and joy to consider how Cardi B and Megan Thee
Stallion’s hip-hop song, “WAP” queers hegemonic inscriptions of
Black women’s sexualities. Ultimately, I argue that subversive
reclamation offers a disruptive reading of Black women’s
pleasure, fundamentally shifting how rhetorical scholars should
talk about Black women’s bodies, sexualities.

2024, Monografia do curso de Moda - Universidade Regional de Blumenau (FURB)

Esta pesquisa descritiva e documental, com abordagem qualitativa, busca compreender o figurino como ferramenta de expressão cultural e estética, destacando seu papel na representação de épocas, contextos históricos e no desenvolvimento de personagens. O objetivo geral é analisar as características dos figurinos nos filmes vencedores do Oscar de Melhor Figurino entre 2020 e 2024, identificando os elementos de moda presentes. Entre os objetivos específicos, destacam-se: contextualizar sobre a contribuição do figurino para a narrativa e construção dos personagens, considerando contexto histórico e gênero; identificar elementos visuais, como cores, design, materiais e acessórios; e analisar o desenvolvimento do figurino em colaboração com marcas e tecnologias. O principal resultado aponta que os figurinos premiados se destacam pela originalidade, autenticidade histórica e conexão com o público e conclui que o figurino vai além da função estética, tornando-se essencial para a narrativa e consolidando estilos e tendências que influenciam a cultura.

2024, Revista de Antropología Social

Reseña del libro, Baldwin, James (2024). La próxima vez el fuego. Capitan Swing

2024, arXiv (Cornell University)

In past few years, several data-sets have been released for text and images. We present an approach to create the data-set for use in detecting and removing gender bias from text. We also include a set of challenges we have faced while creating this corpora. In this work, we have worked with movie data from Wikipedia plots and movie trailers from YouTube. Our Bollywood Movie corpus contains 4000 movies extracted from Wikipedia and 880 trailers extracted from YouTube which were released from 1970-2017. The corpus contains csv files with the following data about each movie-Wikipedia title of movie, cast, plot text, co-referenced plot text, soundtrack information, link to movie poster, caption of movie poster, number of males in poster, number of females in poster. In addition to that, corresponding to each cast member the following data is available-cast name, cast gender, cast verbs, cast adjectives, cast relations, cast centrality, cast mentions. We present some preliminary results on the task of bias removal which suggest that the data-set is quite useful for performing such tasks.

2024, ArXiv

In past few years, several data-sets have been released for text and images. We present an approach to create the data-set for use in detecting and removing gender bias from text. We also include a set of challenges we have faced while creating this corpora. In this work, we have worked with movie data from Wikipedia plots and movie trailers from YouTube. Our Bollywood Movie corpus contains 4000 movies extracted from Wikipedia and 880 trailers extracted from YouTube which were released from 1970-2017. The corpus contains csv files with the following data about each movie - Wikipedia title of movie, cast, plot text, co-referenced plot text, soundtrack information, link to movie poster, caption of movie poster, number of males in poster, number of females in poster. In addition to that, corresponding to each cast member the following data is available - cast name, cast gender, cast verbs, cast adjectives, cast relations, cast centrality, cast mentions. We present some preliminary resu...

2024, Music Theory Spectrum

Review of the 2020 book

2024, el oído pensante

Sin dudas la influencia de la narrativa de Alejo Carpentier ha sido significativa en el contexto latinoamericano, así como su acción legitimadora en la creación de un tópico nacionalista en el siglo XIX en Cuba. Sin embargo, existen numerosos factores que contradicen la tesis carpenteriana como, por ejemplo, la propia complejidad de la sociedad cubana a mediados de siglo y, por tanto, la poca probabilidad de la formación de una nación homogénea y unificada en esta etapa, entre otras razones debido al problema de la colonización española, la permanencia de la esclavitud hasta 1886 y el proceso de criollización e integración de la población negra. El objetivo principal del presente trabajo es deconstruir el discurso sobre el canon del nacionalismo musical en la Cuba colonial cimentado sobre la agenda ideológica nacionalista/americanista de Carpentier en La música en Cuba (1988). Al mismo tiempo que se propone la pertinencia del término criollo o criollista, para el estudio de la actividad musical conexa a determinados circuitos relacionales y de membrecía localizados en la Cuba decimonónica. Para ello ha resultado pertinente el enfoque de “complejo de performance” que propone Alejandro Madrid (2012) para el estudio posnacional del nacionalismo musical.

2024, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture

hen Henri René's Music for the Weaker Sex was released in 1958, it was one of a much larger discography of mood albums that featured women as a central theme. Artists would select certain ideas and images of women and use them not only in the title and album cover art but the musical conception as well. Some albums reinforced gender norms and catered to the male gaze, while others adopted a more playful approach. Female sexuality was portrayed on a spectrum-as inert, submissive, exotic, passionate, or assertive. René's Music for the Weaker Sex, for example, was meant to sonically stimulate women through musical representation of popular male singers of the period with songs titled

2024, Comunicación y Sociedad

Las marcas han escogido diferentes modos de generar adhesión entre los consumidores, desde modelos basados en atributos, beneficios y valor, hasta la toma de posturas políticas críticas y el abrazar causas sociales; esto se conoce como... more

2024, Film Quarterly

African American studies and television scholar Christine Acham interviews Kenya Barris the creator of the top-rated primetime network show Black-ish (ABC, 2014—). Acham tuned in during the 2014 political climate of #BlackLivesMatter to find a show that veered so far from television's traditionally monolithic or culturally void versions of blackness. Her conversation with Kenya Barris took place on June 23, 2017, in Burbank, California. They discussed Black-ish in detail, and also engaged questions of politics, the specificity of black storytelling, the contemporary “Black Television Renaissance,” and the pressures and responsibilities facing black creatives in the industry. At press time, Barris had gone on to create a new spinoff show, Grown-ish, and to collaborate with some of its writers to launch yet another series, Bright Futures, a twenty-something comedy, also at ABC.