Synopses & Reviews
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
Review
“There are moments of epistemological excitement that recognize changes already ongoing, and then there are moments that at the same time both recognize and generate new ways of knowing. The creation of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology is such a moment. It changes our horizons of thought. I’m excited about its effect on my thinking and grateful to the contributors and editors for the boundary stretching.”—Wahneema Lubiano, editor of The House That Race Built
Review
“This fine collection of essays demonstrates the importance of black queer quests and questions.”—Jennifer DeVere Brody, author of Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture
Review
“Black Queer Studies makes a dynamic contribution to the shifting landscape of queer studies. This volume will surely transform our understandings of both black studies and queer studies, and it will create new idioms for the analysis and theorization of race and sexuality. Black Queer Studies is necessary and long overdue.”—Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity
Synopsis
A groundbreaking collection of sixteen essays that examines the productive intersection of the fields of black and queer studies.
About the Author
“Black Queer Studies makes a dynamic contribution to the shifting landscape of queer studies. This volume will surely transform our understandings of both black studies and queer studies, and it will create new idioms for the analysis and theorization of race and sexuality. Black Queer Studies is necessary and long overdue.”—Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity“There are moments of epistemological excitement that recognize changes already ongoing, and then there are moments that at the same time both recognize and generate new ways of knowing. The creation of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology is such a moment. It changes our horizons of thought. I’m excited about its effect on my thinking and grateful to the contributors and editors for the boundary stretching.”—Wahneema Lubiano, editor of The House That Race Built“This fine collection of essays demonstrates the importance of black queer quests and questions.”—Jennifer DeVere Brody, author of Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword: “Home” Is a Four-Letter Word / Sharon P. Holland ix
Introduction: Queering Black Studies/ “Quaring” Queer Studies / E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson 1
I. DISCIPLINARY TENSIONS: BLACK STUDIES/QUEER STUDIES
Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? / Cathy J. Cohen 21
Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity / Roderick A. Ferguson 52
Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies / Dwight A. McBride 68
Outside in Black Studies: Reading from a Queer Place in the Diaspora / Rinaldo Walcott 90
The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Evidence, Everyday Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge / Phillip Brian Harper 106
“Quare” Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother / E. Patrick Johnson 124
II. REPRESENTING THE “RACE”: BLACKNESS, QUEERS, AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY
Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm / Marlon B. Ross 161
Privilege / Devon W. Carbado 190
“Joining the Lesbians”: Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility / Kara Keeling 213
Why Are Gay Ghettoes White? / Charles I. Nero 228
III. HOW TO TEACH THE UNSPEAKABLE: RACE, QUEER STUDIES, AND PEDAGOGY
Embracing the Teachable Moment: The Black Gay Body in the Classroom as Embodied Text / Bryant Keith Alexander 249
Are We Family? Pedagogy and the Race for Queerness / Keith Clark 266
On Being a Witness: Passion, Pedagogy, and the Legacy of James Baldwin / Maurice O. Wallace 276
IV. BLACK QUEER FICTION: WHO IS “READING” US?
But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction / Jewelle Gomez 289
James Baldwin‘s Giovanni‘s Room: Expatriation, “Racial Drag,” and Homosexual Panic / Mae G. Henderson 298
Robert O‘Hara‘s Insurrection: “Que(e)rying History” / Faedra Chatard Carpenter 323
Bibliography 349
Contributors 371
Index 375