Mixed Race Studies

“Yes We Can” Barack Obama’s Proverbial Rhetoric

Peter Lang Publishing
2009
352 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4331-0668-2
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4331-0667

Wolfgang Mieder, Professor of German and Folklore
University of Vermont

As President Barack Obama outlined his promise for change during the presidential campaign, he made effective use of proverbs and proverbial phrases, and invented many quotable epithets that have all the makings of future proverbs. This book examines how Obama’s natural and authentic reliance on traditional metaphors enhances his impressive rhetoric, rather than reducing it to mere sound bites. Proverbs, with their often colorful metaphors, add expressiveness and emotion to his communications, giving people the opportunity to follow his pragmatic or philosophical arguments through common language. No matter the subject, Obama’s prose contains metaphorical language that makes his rhetoric and oratory universally accessible.

This book contains detailed analyses of the proverbial rhetoric in Obama’s books Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006). A section looks at his proverbial language in 229 speeches, news conferences, interviews, and radio addresses, and the final section presents in-depth studies of his seven most significant addresses. It includes a comprehensive contextualized index of 1714 proverbial texts found within the writings and speeches from Obama’s political beginnings to his memorable inaugural address.

Eating the Black Body: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption in African American Literature and Culture

Peter Lang
2006
231 pages
0.340 kg, 0.750 lbs
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-8204-7931-6

Carlyle Van Thompson, Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Education
Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York

In this provocative and original exploration of racial subjugation and its aftermath, Carlyle Van Thompson illumines the racialized sexual desire that reduces Black people to commodities for consumption. Eating the Black Body examines the often-sadistic forms of sexual violence during the period of slavery and its aftermath. By looking at one poem and three novels—Richard Wright’s Between the World and Me, John Oliver Killens’ Youngblood, Gayl Jones’ Corregidora, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred—that examine slavery and the Jim Crow period, Thompson investigates a wide variety of Black bodies as sites of miscegenation and sexual desire. Thompson also examines a horrific case of White male police brutality in New York City in which a Black man was sodomized. Bold and persuasively argued, Eating the Black Body will engage readers in a broad range of literary, historical, and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Consuming Hot Black Bodies: Miscegenation as Sexual Violence in African American Literature and Culture
• Chapter 2: Speaking Desire and Consumption of the Black Body in Richard Wright’s “Between the World and Me”
• Chapter 3: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption: The Enduring Legacy of America’s White-Supremacist Culture of Violence in John Oliver Killens’ Youngblood
• Chapter 4: Miscegenation, Monstrous Memories, and Misogyny as Sexual Consumption in Gayl Jones’ Corregidora
• Chapter 5: Moving Past the Present: Racialized Sexual Violence and Miscegenous Consumption in Octavia Butler’s Kindred
• Chapter 6: White Police Penetrating. Probing, and Playing in the Black Man’s Ass: The Sadistic Sodomizing of Abner Louima
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography

Engaging Culture, Race and Spirituality: New Visions

Peter Lang Publishing
2013
232 pages
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4331-2327-6
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4331-2328-3

Cynthia B. Dillard, Mary Frances Early Endowed Professor in Teacher Education
University of Georgia

Chinwe L. Okpalaoka, Director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Diversity Services in the College of Arts and Sciences
Ohio State University

Engaging Culture, Race and Spirituality addresses a critical question rarely addressed in our conversations and the literature about race, culture and diversity: How might spirituality and our inner lives matter in teaching and teacher education that explicitly engages and addresses race and culture? In ways explicit and embodied, this book focuses on how engaging spirituality and the inner life can serve as radical intervention in our dialogues about race and culture in education. Gathered together are the voices of emerging young scholars whose thinking and research explicitly marshal theories of spirituality as critical interventions in their dialogues and discourses about culture and race in teaching and teacher education. Each chapter is followed by a scholar visionary who points to ways for educators and educational researchers to see the usefulness of such spirituality in engaging research, pedagogy and practices. Their collective visions  all deeply political, sometimes humorous, always insightful, and thoughtfully provocative  call us to a new way of thinking about the «evidence of things unseen», about spirituality in education as a site of profound possibilities for change, equity, and social justice.

Contents

• Cynthia B. Dillard/Chinwe L. Ezueh Okpalaoka: Introduction: Culture, Race, and Dialogue: Toward a Spiritual Praxis in Education
• Tami A. Augustine/Deborah Justice Zurmehly: Conversations about Race: How Embracing Spirituality Opens Space for Dialogues in Teacher Education
• Barbara Dray: Visionary Response: With Mindfulness as a Guide: Engaging Conversations in Teacher Education
• Eyatta Fischer: Writing and Telling: Healing the Pain of Disconnection
• Robin M. Boylorn: Visionary Response: On Teaching and Telling: Two Sides of a Teaching (Cassette) Tape
• Brooke Harris Garad: Spiritually Centered Caring: An Approach for Teaching and Reaching Black Students in Suburbia
• Samara D. Madrid: Visionary Response: Care as a Racialized, Critical, and Spiritual Emotion
• Gilbert Kaburu/Chris Landauer: Less Religion, More Spirituality: Spiritually Relevant Pedagogy in the Global Era
• Khosi Kubeka: Visionary Response: Infusing Identity Enactment as a Component of Spiritually Relevant Pedagogy
• Angela Cartwright Lynskey: Occupy Classrooms: Teaching from a Spiritual Paradigm
• Carmen Liliana Medina: Visionary Response: Spiritual Occupations: Reflections on Pedagogies and Everyday Stories of Globalization
• Ashley N. Patterson: Can One Ever Be Wholly Whole? Fostering Biracial Identity Founded in Spirit
• Bettina L. Love: Visionary Response: Biracial Identity, Spiritual Wholeness, and Black Girlhood
• Erica Womack: Lessons in Love, Literacy, and Listening: Reflections on Learning with and from Black Female Youth
• Marcelle M. Haddix: Visionary Response: Listening Face-to-Face and Eye-to-Eye: Seeing and Believing Black Girls and Women in Educational Practice and Research

The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television

Peter Lang Publishing
Reimagining Ireland. Volume 16
2013
203 pages
5 black and white illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-3-0343-0839-7
DOI: 10.3726/978-3-0353-0507-4

Zélie Asava, Lecturer and Programme Director of Video and Film
Dundalk Institute of Technology, Louth, Ireland

This book examines the position of black and mixed-race characters in Irish film culture. By exploring key film and television productions from the 1990s to the present day, the author uncovers and interrogates concepts of Irish identity, history and nation.

In 2009, Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe, with almost 24 per cent of births attributed to the ‘new Irish’. By 2013, 17 per cent of the nation was foreign-born. Ireland has always been a culturally diverse space and has produced a series of high-profile mixed-race stars, including Phil Lynott, Ruth Negga, and Simon Zebo, among others. Through an analysis of screen visualizations of the black Irish, this study uncovers forgotten histories, challenges the perceived homogeneity of the nation, evaluates integration, and considers the future of the new Ireland. It makes a creative and significant theoretical contribution to scholarly work on the relationship between representation and identity in Irish cinema.

This book was the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Irish Studies.

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Positioning the Black Irish: Theoretical, Historical and Visual Contexts
• Chapter One: ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’: Being Black and Irish in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
• Chapter Two: Gendering the Other: Raced Women in Irish Television (Prosperity (RTE, 2007), Love is The Drug (RTE, 2004) and Fair City (RTE, 1989–present))
• Chapter Three: New Identities in the Irish Horror Film: Isolation (O’Brien, 2005) and Boy Eats Girl (Bradley, 2005)
• Chapter Four: Black and Mixed Masculinities in Irish Cinema: The Nephew (Brady, 1998), Irish Jam (Eyres, 2006) and The Front Line (Gleeson, 2006)
• Chapter Five: Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: Trafficked (O’Connor, 2010) and the Multicultural Irish Thriller
• Chapter Six: The Raced Stranger in Contemporary Cinema: Between the Canals (O’Connor, 2011), Sensation (Hall, 2010), The Good Man (Harrison, 2012) and The Guard (McDonagh, 2011)
• Conclusion
• Framing the Future of the Black Irish Onscreen
• Bibliography
• Index