Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture

About this book

"A shrewdly designed generously expansive timely contribution to our understanding of how black expression continues to define and defy the contours of global (post)modernity. The essays argue persuasively for a transnational ethos binding disparate African and diasporic enactments and together provide a robust conversation about the nature history future and even possibility of blackness as a distinctive mode of cultural practice." --Kimberly Benston author of Performing Blackness "Black Cultural Traffic is nothing less than our generations manifesto on black performance and popular culture. With a distinguished roster of contributors and topics ranging across academic disciplines and the arts (including commentary on film music literature theater television and visual cultures) this volume is not only required reading for scholars serious about the various dimensions of black performance it is also a timely and necessary teaching tool. It captures the excitement and intellectual innovation of a field that has come of age. Kudos!" --Dwight A. McBride author of Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch "The explosion of interest in black popular culture studies in the past fifteen years has left a significant need for a reader that reflects this new scholarly energy. Black Cultural Traffic answers that need." --Mark Anthony Neal author of Songs in the Key of Black Life "A revolutionary anthology that will be widely read and taught. It crisscrosses continents and cultures and examines confluences and influences of black popular culture -- music dance theatre television fashion and film. It also adds a new dimension to current discussions of racial ethnic and national identity." --Horace Porter author of The Making of a Black Scholar