The advent of the internet and the availability of social media and digital downloads have expanded the creation, distribution, and consumption of Black cultural production as never before. At the same time, a new generation of Black public intellectuals who speak to the relationship between race, politics, and popular culture has come into national prominence. The contributors to Are You Entertained? address these trends to consider what culture and blackness mean in the twenty-first century's digital consumer economy. In this collection of essays, interviews, visual art, and an artist statement the contributors examine a range of topics and issues, from music, white consumerism, cartoons, and the rise of Black Twitter to the NBA's dress code, dance, and Moonlight. Analyzing the myriad ways in which people perform, avow, politicize, own, and love blackness, this volume charts the shifting debates in Black popular culture scholarship over the past quarter century while offering new avenues for future scholarship.
Contributors. Takiyah Nur Amin, Patricia Hill Collins, Kelly Jo Fulkerson-Dikuua, Simone C. Drake, Dwan K. Henderson, Imani Kai Johnson, Ralina L. Joseph, David J. Leonard, Emily J. Lordi, Nina Angela Mercer, Mark Anthony Neal, H. Ike Okafor-Newsum, Kinohi Nishikawa, Eric Darnell Pritchard, Richard Schur, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Vincent Stephens, Lisa B. Thompson, Sheneese Thompson
- Cover
- Contents
- Introduction
- I. PERFORMING BLACKNESS
- 1. “Mutts Like Me”: Mixed-Race Jokes and Post-Racial Rejection in the Obama Era / Ralina L. Joseph
- 2. Black Radio: Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, and Janelle Monáe / Emily J. Lordi
- 3. Camping and Vamping across Borders: Locating Cabaret Singers in the Black Cultural Spectrum / Vincent Stephens
- 4. The Art of Black Popular Culture / H. Ike Okafor-Newsum
- 5. Interview / Lisa B. Thompson
- II. POLITICIZING BLACKNESS
- 6. Refashioning Political Cartoons: Comics of Jackie Ormes 1938–1958 / Kelly Jo Fulkerson-Dikuua
- 7. Queer Kinship and Worldmaking in Black Queer Web Series: Drama Queenz and No Shade / Eric Darnell Pritchard
- 8. Styling and Profiling: Ballers, Blackness, and the Sartorial Politics of the NBA / David J. Leonard
- 9. Interview / Tracy Sharpley-Whiting
- III. OWNING BLACKNESS
- 10. The Subaltern Is Signifyin(g): Black Twitter as a Site of Resistance / Sheneese Thompson
- 11. Authentic Black Cool?: Branding and Trademarks in Contemporary African American Culture / Richard Schur
- 12. Black Culture without Black People: Hip-Hop Dance beyond Appropriation Discourse / Imani Kai Johnson
- 13. At the Corner of Chaos and Divine: Black Ritual Theater, Performance, and Politics / Nina Angela Mercer
- 14. Interview / Mark Anthony Neal
- IV. LOVING BLACKNESS
- 15. The Booty Don’t Lie: Pleasure, Agency, and Resistance in Black Popular Dance / Takiyah Nur Amin
- 16. He Said Nothing: Sonic Space and the Production of Quietude in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight / Simone C. Drake
- 17. Black Women Readers and the Uses of Urban Fiction / Kinohi Nishikawa
- 18. Interview / Patricia Hill Collins
- Contributors
- Index
- A
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- C
- D
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- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
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- P
- Q
- R
- S
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- U
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- W
- X
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Audio
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