Black Queer Studies

by Johnson, E. Patrick; Henderson, Mae G.; Holland, Sharon Patricia (CON); Cohen, Cathy J. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822336181
• ISBN10: 0822336189
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

While over the past decade a number of scholars have done significant work on questions of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered identities, this volume is the first to collect this groundbreaking work and make black queer studies visible as a developing field of study in the United States. Bringing together essays by established and emergent scholars, this collection assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior work on race and sexuality and highlights the theoretical and political issues at stake in the nascent field of black queer studies. Including work by scholars based in English, film studies, black studies, sociology, history, political science, legal studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the volume showcases the broadly interdisciplinary nature of the black queer studies project.The contributors consider representations of the black queer body, black queer literature, the pedagogical implications of black queer studies, and the ways that gender and sexuality have been glossed over in black studies and race and class marginalized in queer studies. Whether exploring the closet as a racially loaded metaphor, arguing for the inclusion of diaspora studies in black queer studies, considering how the black lesbian voice that was so expressive in the 1970s and 1980s is all but inaudible today, or investigating how the social sciences have solidified racial and sexual exclusionary practices, these insightful essays signal an important and necessary expansion of queer studies.Contributors. Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword: "Home"

Is a Four-Letter Word

Introduction: Queering Black Studies/ "Quaring"

Queer Studies

Disciplinary Tensions: Black Studies/Queer Studies

Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?

Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity

Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies

Outside in Black Studies: Reading from a Queer Place in the Diaspora

The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Evidence, Everyday Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge

"Quare"

Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother

Representing The "Race": Blackness, Queers, And The Politics Of Visibility

Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm

Privilege

"Joining the Lesbians": Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility

Why Are Gay Ghettoes White?

How To Teach The Unspeakable: Race, Queer Studies, And Pedagogy

Embracing the Teachable Moment: The Black Gay Body in the Classroom as Embodied Text

Are We Family? Pedagogy and the Race for Queerness

On Being a Witness: Passion, Pedagogy, and the Legacy of James Baldwin

Black Queer Fiction: Who Is "Reading" Us?

But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room: Expatriation, "Racial Drag," and Homosexual Panic

Insurrection: "Que(e)rying History"

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

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