University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press
Pages: 304
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-61148-649-0 • Hardback • December 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)
978-1-61148-651-3 • Paperback • September 2016 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-1-61148-650-6 • eBook • December 2014 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
James Braxton Petersonis associate professor of English and director of Africana studies at Lehigh University.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Into the Midst of Things
James Braxton Peterson
Part I: Head Matter: The Mind and the Mask
Chapter 1: An Empire State of Mind
Imani Perry
Chapter 2: Consolidating a Hip Hop Nation: Revisiting the Videotaped Police Beating of Rodney King, 20 Years Later
Tanji Gilliam
Chapter 3: Head on Straight, Mask on Crooked: MF DOOM and the Trope of the Mask
Nicholas James
Chapter 4: The Superhero Aesthetics in Hip Hop Culture
Will Boone
Part II: Visual Matter
Chapter 5: I Have a Meme: Photography, Memory, and Digital Commemorations of the March on Washington
Paul M. Farber
Chapter 6: How Deep? Skin Deep? A Case Study on Shameful National Orientations
Emily Churilla
Chapter 7: Faggoty/White/Uniform: Gays in the Military and A Few Good Men
Scott St. Pierre
Part III: Global Flows
Chapter 8: Selected Poems
Suheir Hammad
Chapter 9: The Communal Womb in Haile Gerima’s Sankofa
Belinda Monique Waller-Peterson
Chapter 10: South Asian Hip Hop Wannabes and the Chavs Who Love Them: The Blackening of British Culture in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani
Delores B. Phillips
Chapter 11: “A True and Faithful Account of Mr. Ota Benga the Pygmy,” written by M. Berman, Zookeeper, a short story
Adam Mansbach
Part IV: Culture of Personality
Chapter 12: Richard Pryor’s Pain: From Stand-Up Comedy to Hollywood Film
Sean Springer
Chapter 13: You Are Now Tuned Into the ... Greatest: Jay-Z and the Spectacle of the Cool
Wilfredo Gomez
Chapter 14: Disassembling the “Matrix of Domination”: Janelle Monae’s Transformative Vision
Carrie Walker
Chapter 15: “Dreams of the Drum”: A Keynote Address
Michael Eric Dyson
Bibliography
Sound Recordings
About the Contributors
Index
With this collection, James Braxton Peterson brings together an amazing group of scholars, who collectively grapple with issues of race, identity, media, and popular culture. In Media Res embodies a scholarly cypher, whereupon each brilliant contribution elevates the other, challenging each of us to step up our game, to expand the intellectual horizons, and to push the scholarly conversation toward real change. Instructive and engaging, this work bridges the scholarly and educational missions, the traditions of literary theory and hip-hop, and the cultural productions and ongoing struggles for inclusion, each of which are transforming America’s colleges and universities in profound ways.
— David Leonard, Washington State University