African Americans and the Classics

African Americans and the Classics PDF Author: Margaret Malamud
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788315790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A new wave of research in black classicism has emerged in the 21st century that explores the role played by the classics in the larger cultural traditions of black America, Africa and the Caribbean. Addressing a gap in this scholarship, Margaret Malamud investigates why and how advocates for abolition and black civil rights (both black and white) deployed their knowledge of classical literature and history in their struggle for black liberty and equality in the United States. African Americans boldly staked their own claims to the classical world: they deployed texts, ideas and images of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt in order to establish their authority in debates about slavery, race, politics and education. A central argument of this book is that knowledge and deployment of Classics was a powerful weapon and tool for resistance-as improbable as that might seem now-when wielded by black and white activists committed to the abolition of slavery and the end of the social and economic oppression of free blacks. The book significantly expands our understanding of both black history and classical reception in the United States.

African Americans and the Classics

African Americans and the Classics PDF Author: Margaret Malamud
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788315790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
A new wave of research in black classicism has emerged in the 21st century that explores the role played by the classics in the larger cultural traditions of black America, Africa and the Caribbean. Addressing a gap in this scholarship, Margaret Malamud investigates why and how advocates for abolition and black civil rights (both black and white) deployed their knowledge of classical literature and history in their struggle for black liberty and equality in the United States. African Americans boldly staked their own claims to the classical world: they deployed texts, ideas and images of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt in order to establish their authority in debates about slavery, race, politics and education. A central argument of this book is that knowledge and deployment of Classics was a powerful weapon and tool for resistance-as improbable as that might seem now-when wielded by black and white activists committed to the abolition of slavery and the end of the social and economic oppression of free blacks. The book significantly expands our understanding of both black history and classical reception in the United States.

Early African-American Classics

Early African-American Classics PDF Author: Anthony Appiah
Publisher: Bantam Classics
ISBN: 0553905090
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
This essential one-volume collection brings together some of the most influential and significant works by African-American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Included herein are such classics as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) and excerpts from W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Harriet A. Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (1861), Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery (1901), and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912). Whether read as records of African-American history, autobiography, or literature, these invaluable texts stand as timeless monuments to the courage, intellect, and dignity of those for whom writing itself was an act of rebellion—and whose voices and experiences would have otherwise been silenced forever. Edited and with an introduction by Anthony Appiah, who explains the distinctive American literary and cultural context of the time, this edition of Early African-American Classics remains the standard by which all similar collections will inevitably be compared.

Ulysses in Black

Ulysses in Black PDF Author: Patrice D. Rankine
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299220036
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, Patrice D. Rankine asserts that the classics need not be a mark of Eurocentrism, as they have long been considered. Instead, the classical tradition can be part of a self-conscious, prideful approach to African American culture, esthetics, and identity. Ulysses in Black demonstrates that, similar to their white counterparts, African American authors have been students of classical languages, literature, and mythologies by such writers as Homer, Euripides, and Seneca. Ulysses in Black closely analyzes classical themes (the nature of love and its relationship to the social, Dionysus in myth as a parallel to the black protagonist in the American scene, misplaced Ulyssean manhood) as seen in the works of such African American writers as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen. Rankine finds that the merging of a black esthetic with the classics—contrary to expectations throughout American culture—has often been a radical addressing of concerns including violence against blacks, racism, and oppression. Ultimately, this unique study of black classicism becomes an exploration of America’s broader cultural integrity, one that is inclusive and historic. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

Three African-American Classics

Three African-American Classics PDF Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486131114
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Essential reading for students of African-American history includes autobiographies of former slaves Washington and Douglass, plus Du Bois' landmark essays, which counsel an aggressive approach to civil rights.

The Golden Age of the Classics in America

The Golden Age of the Classics in America PDF Author: Carl J Richard
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054490
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In a masterful study Carl Richard explores how the Greek and Roman classics became enshrined in American antebellum culture. For the first time, knowledge of the classics extended beyond aristocratic males to the middle class, women, African Americans, and frontier settlers. The Civil War led to a radical alteration of the educational system in a way that steadily eroded the preeminence of the classics.

A Home Elsewhere

A Home Elsewhere PDF Author: Robert B. Stepto
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674050969
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University --

My Soul Has Grown Deep

My Soul Has Grown Deep PDF Author: John Edgar Wideman
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
ISBN: 9780345455666
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this vital and inspiring volume, John Edgar Wideman has brought together the first truly representative sampling of literature by African-American writers in the early centuries of our history. Reaching across periods, styles, and regional borders, Wideman has selected twelve works of genius–some of them celebrated literary icons, others neglected or forgotten masterpieces– and reprinted them in their entirety. The result is a book as thrilling in its passion as it is vast in scope. Though these selections come from a range of genres (verse, memoir, historical, and personal narrative), they are all, fundamentally, stories of strength and survival. Frederick Douglass’s frank narrative of escape from slavery and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s classic verse take their place beside lesser-known works like Nat Love’s stirring account of life as a black cowboy, Ida B. Wells’s haunting descriptions of lynchings, and the crisp, compelling adventures of Olaudah Equiano. Wideman prefaces each selection with an illuminating biographical essay. The fruit of a lifetime’s devotion to the best American writing,My Soul Has Grown Deepwill stand as an enduring monument to the depth and beauty of African-American literature.

Digging

Digging PDF Author: Amiri Baraka
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520943090
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
For almost half a century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the most important commentators on African American music and culture. In this brilliant assemblage of his writings on music, the first such collection in nearly twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography, history, musical analysis, and political commentary to recall the sounds, people, times, and places he's encountered. As in his earlier classics, Blues People and Black Music, Baraka offers essays on the famous—Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane—and on those whose names are known mainly by jazz aficionados—Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style, with its deep roots in poetry, makes palpable his love and respect for his jazz musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm show us again how much Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers mattered. He brings home to us how music itself matters, and how musicians carry and extend that knowledge from generation to generation, providing us, their listeners, with a sense of meaning and belonging.

Blacks in Antiquity

Blacks in Antiquity PDF Author: Frank M. Snowden
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674076266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Investigates the participation of black Africans, usually referred to as "Ethiopians," by the Greek and Romans, in classical civilization, concluding that they were accepted by pagans and Christians without prejudice.

Africans in America

Africans in America PDF Author: Charles Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156008549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.