https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/7810628/american-popular-culture-1950
American Popular Culture Since 1950 Popular Culture has been an integral factor in the fabric of America since its inception. Indeed, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the film and television we watch, literature we consume and other facets of our daily being is heavily, if not entirely influenced by the culture that we reside in. Exploring this culture can reveal some of our most deeply held beliefs and assumptions, ideas that we may otherwise take for granted. This is particularly the case since the mid-20th century. We are soliciting proposals for a collection of essays on American Popular Culture Since 1950. Submitted proposals should discuss any of the following topics, celebrities, events, music, film, television, race, gender, religion, literature, sexuality, family, technology, etc. While we will consider submissions from ABD’s and individuals from varied academic backgrounds, STRONG PREFERENCE will be given to Ph.D.’s, Ed.D.’s, MFA’s, MBA’s, Juris Doctorate’s, Journalists, MD’s and others with terminal degrees. Proposals should be no more than two pages. Send submissions either to: Elwood Watson, Ph.D. Professor of History, African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies East Tennessee State University (423) 439-8575 [email protected] or Blake Scott Ball, Ph.D. Chair, Department of History and Political Science Huntingdon College (334) 833-4550 [email protected] Submission Deadline: 30 September 2021 Contact Email: [email protected]u
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Introduction
Gospelwoman and pastor Shirley Ann Caesar Williams is celebrated and well known for her notable gift of gospel singing that began at eight years old—“I was the little girl with the enormous voice” (Caesar 3, 36)—and she exercised her gift wholeheartedly. “As far back as I can remember I have always loved to sing. Singing for the Lord was in my heart and in my soul… I sang all the time, and I knew I wanted to sing for the rest of my life” (Caesar 62). Although a gospel singer and preacher for most of her life, Caesar’s service as a Durham, North Carolina, city councilperson in 1987 revealed her political aspirations. Caesar ran for office because she wanted to “give back” to her community and she wanted to make her “town one of equal opportunity for everyone” (Caesar 152-3). Caesar sought to improve the basic welfare of Durham citizens during her four-year term. “My immediate goals as an elected official were to fulfill my campaign promises: to provide affordable housing for the elderly, to decrease unemployment, and … to recruit more business and industry to our city” (Caesar 156). Caesar’s campaign promises committed her to breaking (or, at least, weakening) structural domains of power around housing and jobs (Collins 203). Indeed, historically, many African Americans, particularly Black women, in Durham faced structural impediments in their living conditions and economic and educational opportunities (Greene 123; Korstad and Leloudis 176). Caesar’s opportunity to run, win the seat on the city council, and serve in a political role in the late 1980s is due in part to the legal accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. Caesar became a visible political figure in this at-large city council position. However, in the 1960s, she was neither politically active in the traditional sense of political activity nor did she physically participate in the Civil Rights Movement through marching, “sitting-in,” protesting, speaking, and demonstrating in Durham. This is odd considering Durham’s highly effective Black freedom movement activities dating to the forties (Greene). One obvious reason for Caesar’s absence or non-participation was her performance schedule. As a professional gospel singer and itinerant singing evangelist, it was common for her to have engagements in other cities on most days of the week, especially weekends. Although Caesar did not “march and protest,” she, nevertheless, held strong concerns about the status of race relations in the United States, sympathized with the struggles of African Americans, and chose a style of activism suitable to her talents, gifts, and religious calling. Thus, notwithstanding her political activities as councilperson, Caesar’s activism remained primarily a ministerial activism. Patricia Hill Collins provides a gendered, racial framework that opens a space to consider Caesar’s spiritual brand of activism. Collins defines Black women’s activism by assessing our “collective actions within everyday life that challenge domination” from the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power (203). This broader definition “creates space for diverse African-American women to see how their current or potential everyday activities participate in Black women’s activism” (Collins 203). This assessment in turn makes possible the inclusion of Caesar’s version of activism in the Black civil rights activism metanarrative, thereby lessening the overall mediated “invisibility” complex imposed upon the numbers of Black women who were initiators and agents in the struggle (Lott 332). The incident that propelled Caesar into ministerial activism was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968. Caesar’s self-styled and Spirit-directed activism fell in line with her “everyday activities” of preaching and teaching in Black churches, singing in auditoriums, and recording for record companies. Her preaching, teaching, singing, and recording targeted the emotional and psychological survival of African Americans. Caesar’s response to the assassination of King, Jr., catalyzed her ministerial activism. Caesar, Black Women, and Activism in Durham Shirley Caesar was born on October 13, 1938, to “Big” Jim Caesar and Hallie Martin Caesar in their home on 2209 Chatauqua Street, the tenth of thirteen children (Caesar 33). Caesar’s father led a male gospel group, the Just Come Four Quarter, and worked for Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company in Durham (Caesar 13, 14). Caesar’s mother was a “semi-invalid” whose “handicapped foot made it impossible for her to work on a full-time job” (Caesar 19). Caesar’s formative religious upbringing was in two Black Sanctified churches, Fisher Memorial United Holy Church of America and Mount Calvary Holy Church (Caesar 23). She joined the Caravans, the “best-known black female gospel group of all time” in the country, in August 1958, just a few months before her twentieth birthday (Caesar 61-2, 68). Caesar sang and traveled with the Caravans for eight years, ending her association with the group in August 1966 when she went solo. Two years later in 1968 she formed the Shirley Caesar Singers (Caesar 90). Caesar notes that her calling to preach occurred when she was 17 years old (Caesar 10, 29-31, 84, 174, 178, 184). Indeed, part of the reason Caesar left the Caravans was because it was difficult to fulfill her responsibilities to the group and to God (Caesar 84). It was obvious that my remaining with the Caravans was only delaying the inevitable. As long as I stayed, I would only be able to partially fulfill God’s mandate. With them, I was singing the gospel, and in our concerts people were being blessed and many were accepting Christ into their lives. But I was not fulfilling God’s direct edict to evangelize His Word. Our rigorous, inflexible concert itinerary made it almost impossible for me to schedule any speaking engagements and, to a large degree, deprived me of the liberty to accept the invitations I frequently received to conduct revival services. (Caesar 84) While Caesar was moving into the professionalization stage of both her singing career and her ministry in the late fifties, Black working class women in Durham were already actively participating in the Black freedom struggle. Prominent Black women who emerged as neighborhood leaders included Ann Atwater and Pearlie Wright (Greene 180). At a national level, low-income Black women constituted a majority of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People members and of the indigenous organizers hired by the United Organizations for Community Improvement (Greene 64, 121). Caesar’s Ministerial Activism Caesar identified with the social oppression of African Americans. “I grew up during an era when racism, sexism, and prejudice were very prevalent” (Caesar 2). However, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was especially significant to Caesar. She laments, “whenever there is someone who wants to help humanity and unite the people, society always destroys him” (Caesar 104). Discussed in Chapter Seven, “Forgive and Forget,” of Caesar’s autobiography, The Lady, the Melody, and the Word: The Inspirational Story of the First Lady of Gospel, Dr. King’s assassination became central to her impending activism. King made five public appearances in Durham between 1956 and 1964 (Durham County Library). Coincidentally, King scheduled to speak in Durham on April 4, 1968, the date of his assassination on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee (Durham County Library). He cancelled at the last minute, feeling that he needed to be elsewhere. Dr. King’s assassination had a tremendous impact on Caesar, moving her to reflect upon the focus of her ministerial career. “As a young Black woman trying to overcome adversity and accomplish a music career in the sixties, I certainly could not ignore the racial tensions that tore at the edges of America” (Caesar 98). Caesar was concerned about how the heightened racial conflict would affect her as a traveling and performing gospel singer. As a minister and a gospel singer and to some degree a leader in the African-American community, I had to do some real soul searching because, in all honesty, like the majority of Black America I was hurt, bewildered, and quite upset. I kept pondering, What should my stance be? How do I respond? Should I march and protest? Should I speak out against man’s inhumanity to man? I am not a proponent of violence in any form, but I wondered when I stood to minister, what could I possibly say to a world so torn apart by racial division during these dreadful times? (Caesar 104) “Coming out of a season of prayer, fasting, and careful thought” Caesar resolved that she could “serve the Lord best” by “using the pulpit and the stage to proclaim Jesus’ gospel of grace and love and to reaffirm Dr. King’s position of nonviolence” (Caesar 104-5). That is, the pulpit of the Black Church and the stage of the public auditorium. In these iconic spaces, Caesar’s decision to use the pulpit and the stage to convey values of Jesus Christ and Dr. King became her “ministerial activism.” The concept of ministry within the religious setting relates to pastoral, preaching, and teaching functions where authority resides in the spiritual revelation and charisma of the person participating in these functions (Stephenson 412). Ministerial activism is socioemotional, religious, and interior. Caesar’s sermonettes, sermons, and messages demonstrate her ministerial activism. In my first sermon after Dr. King’s death I told the congregation, “We are a blessed people in spite of everything, and the Lord will take care of us. He always has, and he always will. You don’t fight hate with hate; you fight hate with love. So love those who despitefully use you, and persecute you, and speak evil against you. Don’t condescend to the enemy’s level. Remember that Jesus always responded to hate with love, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. personified the teachings of Jesus. If he were here this morning, I believe he would tell us, ‘And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap if we faint not (Galatians 6.9 KJV).’” (Caesar 105) Caesar’s activism resisted a type of hegemonic domain of power of which Blacks were acutely aware: profoundly limiting beliefs and attitudes regarding Black self-identity (Collins 302-5). Caesar acted as a “centerperson” (Collins 219-20). She fostered group solidarity by focusing on the grace and love of God in her sermonettes, sermons, and messages to Black Christians to whom she ministered during her travels. She fulfilled a distinctive and important psychological and emotional function for African Americans, boosting their morale, assuaging their fears, and encouraging their dependence on God (see Raymond 147). “We are a blessed people in spite of everything, and the Lord will take care of us. He always has, and he always will.” Through preaching and teaching, Caesar’s activism also attacked thought processes within Black Christians that said that Blacks were unequal to whites and that whites were superior to Blacks (Caesar 105). We “are all made in God’s image…the color of our skin is immaterial…[I]in God’s eyes we are all equal and …no person, race, or nationality… is superior to the other” (Caesar 105). Caesar’s ministerial activism was no different from Dr. King or the other local Black male pastors in many Black churches across the nation. Caesar stands out because this was her primary form of activism and she was mobile while delivering it. That is, Caesar’s itinerancy meant that she traveled most days of the year. She sang in Black churches in many cities, making her ministerial activism mobile with the ability to reach African Americans outside of Durham. Conclusion Caesar’s ministerial activism connects to Black group struggle for psychological and emotional survival. Her decision to use the pulpit and the stage to preach the love of Jesus and to reaffirm Dr. King’s support of non-violence is a form of resistance. Drawing on her ministerial calling, Caesar resisted white supremacist ideologies that dehumanized, stereotyped, and limited the mobility of Black Americans in the late sixties. Shirley Caesar’s ministerial activism while not “removing the mountains” of institutional arrangements, organizational practices, and cultural processes that reproduce and maintain racial hierarchy nevertheless, addressed the daily psychological aggressions and emotional traumas experienced by average Black Christians. Works Cited Caesar, Shirley. The Lady, the Melody, and the Word: The Inspirational Story of the First Lady of Gospel. Thomas Nelson, 1998. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge, 2000. Durham County Library. “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Visits to Durham, 1956-1964.” The Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project. www.durhamcountylibrary.org/exhibits/dcrhp/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021. Greene, Christina. Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina. U of North Carolina P, 2005. Korstad, Robert R. and James L. Leloudis. To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America. U of North Carolina P, 2010. Lott, Martha. “The Relationship between the ‘Invisibility’ of African American Women in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and their Portrayal in Modern Film.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 331-54. Raymond, Emilie. Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement. U of Washington P, 2015. Robb K. “Thread: House of Beauty/HOB Records.” Motown Forum, 7 Apr. 2020, www.Soulful Detroit.com FORUM. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021. Stephenson, Lisa P. “Prophesying Women and Ruling Men: Women’s Religious Authority in North American Pentecostalism.” Religions, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 410-26. Introduction
Director James Mangold’s live-action superhero film1 (Brown 5) Logan (2017), in its early marketing, was billed as the last time Australian actor Hugh Jackman would play the role of superhero Wolverine, or James “Logan” Howlett (Olsen).2 Jackman has played Wolverine for 17 years and has appeared in two solo films and in four X-Men films.3 As a dominant character in the X-Men films starting with the 2000 X-Men film, Wolverine is a well-defined hero with a well-established track record for popularity, licensing, (McAllister, Gordon, Jancovich 110) and sequels. Even with this history, Logan is a different superhero movie with a clever plot twist hinted at by the first theatrical poster released for the film on October 5, 2016.4 Logan introduces “X23-23”/Laura,5 a pre-adolescent mutant who holds the potential for replacing Wolverine/Logan.6 While Logan chronicles the death of superhero Wolverine/Logan, it is also a dramatization of the initiation of Wolverine/Logan’s daughter, X-23/Laura into live-action film superheroics.7 Logan and Laura’s “Initiation” into Superheroics Logan takes place in 2029 with few mutants living and with no new mutants having been born in the last 25 years. Logan, or the Wolverine, is working as a limousine driver in El Paso, Texas. Wolverine/Logan and mutant tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) care for Professor X/Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), now a nonagenarian, who often loses control of his telepathic abilities, paralyzing everyone near him with the exception of Wolverine. All three mutants live in an abandoned smelting plant in Northern Mexico along the Mexican border. The action of Logan begins when 11-year old X-23/Laura (Daphne Keen) is brought to the attention of Logan through Gabriela Lopez (Elizabeth Rodriguez), a nurse who cared for mutant children such as Laura born in the “belly of Mexican girls” impregnated with DNA samples from several mutants who lived in the late 2010s and early 2020’s. The Alkali-Transigen Project of which Lopez was affiliated for 10 years, is a subsidiary of Alkali Corporation, an American-owned company, administered by Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant) and is located in Mexico City, Mexico (“Transigen”). The Alkali-Transigen Project is approved and funded under the pretense of a “pediatric cancer study.” However, in fact, Laura and the other mutant children are the true focus of Rice’s “pharmaceutical study.” Charles is the first to know of Laura through his telepathic conversations with her prior to Lopez’s encounter with Logan. Charles tells Logan that these mutants need Logan’s help and that he knows “speciation when he sees it” referring to the new mutants. Caliban comments on the fact Charles is “communicating with someone,” although Logan does not believe Charles or Caliban. Charles and Logan learn from a video on Lopez’s cellphone that as part of the “X-23” project, Laura and the other children were created to be soldiers, their “bodies, weapons” to kill. As the children grew older, they became more difficult to control and they refused to fight. Since they refused to fight, they were considered to be “useless.” With the completion of the “X-24” project (“something…without a soul”), the nurses were told that the “study” would be shut down. Lopez and other nurses helped many children escape from the Transigen compound. Lopez searches for and finds “the Wolverine” working his chauffeur job at a funeral gravesite. Lopez requests Logan’s help because Rice’s Reavers are searching for the mutant children to return them to Transigen to kill them. Lopez believes that Logan could protect and take Laura safely to “Eden,” supposedly a place “in the north” for mutants described in the X-Men comic books in Laura’s possession. Laura’s role in Logan is to be successfully initiated into live-action film superheroics (see Brown, “American Western” 83-4). As doubled-protagonists, Laura is the initiate-superhero to superhero Logan. To accomplish this change in her social status, Laura undergoes an informal ritual of passage (van Gennep 2-3, 10-11), specifically an initiation (van Gennep 3, 65) into superheroics.8 Rituals of passage mark the “passage from one situation to another” (van Gennep 10). Laura is passing from being an untrained superhero to being a trained superhero. Laura’s informal initiation process resembles a heroic monomythic adventure. Through Rice’s “study,” Laura was created and trained to be a “soldier.” Being trained and functioning as a soldier is very different from being trained and functioning as a superhero in four ways. First, soldiers are placed in a strict hierarchical environment where their authorities must be obeyed at all times. Second, soldiers do what they are told to do, individual decision-making is discouraged for the most part. Third, soldiers do not receive a full understanding or explanation of why they are doing what they are doing. Fourth, soldiers undergo tests to assess their skills. These tests are not considered to be initiation rituals. Superheroes, on the other hand, have personal autonomy and authority and exercise extreme levels of self-control. Superheroes understand and recognize governmental and military authorities but they do not necessarily obey their commands. Superheroes are at all times protecting and defending a community or society rather than defending the interests of themselves, governments, nations, businesses, and corporations. Individual decision-making is typical superheroic behavior. A good soldier exhibits none of these superheroic characteristics while acting in the line of duty. Formal, culturally proscribed rituals include specific actions, personas, and events. On the whole, initiation rituals exemplify “transition, since they have well marked and protracted marginal or liminal phases” (Turner 95). Laura’s informal initiation displays several characteristics of transition but is not specifically a ritual. For one, initiation rituals require the participation of the adults or those individuals who have attained the status to which the initiates are voluntarily (or involuntarily) seeking to attain. Initiation rites occur within a society or community holding unifying beliefs, values, and norms. No matter the ritual, there is a common understanding by all the people of the purpose of the ritual, when the ritual must occur, how it must occur, and by and for whom. Unlike formal rituals in societies and communities in real time and space, however, Laura’s community in Logan is rather small, only composed of Gabriela, Logan, Charles, and Laura’s mutant friends. Further, Laura’s community is ineffective as its members are unattached and disconnected and its structure is unorganized and unfocused. Since there is no established community or society, the purpose of Laura’s initiation is not established or articulated formally in the film. Even with these differences, the significance of Laura’s role and her function as related to Logan is best explained as an informal initiation. Three themes contextualize the significance of Laura’s purpose and function and demonstrate that she is undergoing an informal initiation in Logan: (1) Logan and Laura’s relationship, (2) Laura’s learning experiences, and (3) Logan and X-24’s deaths. Dr. Sam Chand's statement is a powerful statement that could be useful in all areas of a person's life: "Every decision you make is a long-term decision, and should be made accordingly! Short-term decisions are only a temporary fix that will hurt you in the long run!." Here's a link to his short video, "Short and Long-term Decisions."
This February, NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert series will celebrate Black History Month by featuring 13 Tiny Desk (home) concerts by Black artists across genres. The lineup includes both emerging and established artists who will be performing a Tiny Desk concert for the first time.
In this intimate four-hour series from executive producer, host, and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., we trace how this came to be in the 400 year-old story of the Black church in America, all the way down to its bedrock role as the site of African American survival and endurance, grace and resilience, thriving and testifying, freedom and independence, solidarity and speaking truth to power.
Airing: 02/16/21 Rating: NR Appointment Period
Director's Name Spring 2012-Summer 2016 Dr. Susana Peña (inaugural director) Summer 2016-Summer 2017 Dr. Angela Nelson (acting director) Summer 2017-Summer 2021 Dr. Susana Peña Summer 2021-Summer 2025 Dr. Angela Nelson Updated 8/3/2021; 2/24/2023 When college instructors teach their courses and when college students learn in those courses an exchange occurs. It is an exchange of knowledge, information, experience, perspective, opinion, insight, beliefs, values, and norms. This teaching/learning exchange is powerful, impactful, and expected in the college setting. There are four pivotal elements in the teaching/learning exchange—pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings. Pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings are pivotal elements of the teaching/learning exchange (or teaching/learning exchanges) because the successful teaching/learning exchange is dependent upon these four elements. The exchange is dependent upon these four elements because the foundation of successful teaching and learning is purpose, focus, and planning.
Pedagogy is a behind-the-scenes practice initiated and completed by an instructor in any given university, college, department, program, and individual course. Pedagogy is the art, the practice, and the method behind and of the teaching act. Any art, practice, or method involves purpose, focus, and planning. Course mapping is where instructors align the outcomes of their course with activities and assessments. Like pedagogy, the instructor of a course completes course mapping. It is intentional, focused, and planned before a student enrolls in a class. Syllabi are documents created by instructors that outline and describe the course subject matter, policies, materials, assignment and assessment deadlines and that provide a partial articulation of the instructor’s pedagogy. The class meeting is where pedagogy, course mapping, and syllabi are in play and where students are active players with their instructors in the teaching/learning exchange. The class meeting is a ritual. The class meeting is an expression, a demonstration, and a space where interplay, interaction, consensus, and conflict occur. The class meeting is like a “borderland.” It is simultaneously liminal, transitional, and unstable because the class meeting is at the border of new knowledge, new information, new ideas, new insights, and new perspectives. Students are constantly on the border of recalling prior knowledge, inserting new knowledge, and generating yet a newer knowledge. This threefold foundation is the pivot upon which teaching/learning revolves and evolves. Attention to pedagogy, course mapping, syllabi, and class meetings is well worth the investment of time by college instructors from graduate assistants to full professors. |
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