Henry Glassie has been publishing with IU Press since the 1970s, making him the longest active IU Press author. This highly anticipated work, Daniel Johnston: A Portrait of the Artist as a Potter in North Carolina, is the highlight of a lifelong career in humanistic scholarship and now available wherever books are sold.
Daniel Johnston, the subject of the book, was raised on a farm in Randolph County, North Carolina. When he returned from Thailand with a new way to make monumental pots, he also built a log shop and a giant kiln for wood-firing. He set out to create beautiful pots, grand in scale, graceful in form, and burned bright in a blend of ash and salt. With mastery achieved and apprentices to teach, Daniel Johnston turned his brain to larger installations. Among other projects, he built an open-air installation on the grounds around the North Carolina Museum of Art, where 178 handmade, wood-fired columns march across a slope in a straight line, 350 feet in length, that dips and lifts with the earth while the tops of the pots maintain a level horizon.
In 2000, when he was still Mark Hewitt's apprentice, Daniel Johnston met Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, who has done fieldwork on ceramic traditions on five different continents. Over the years, during a steady stream of intimate interviews, Glassie gathered the understanding that enabled him to compose this portrait of Daniel Johnston, a young artist who makes great pots in the eastern Piedmont region of North Carolina.
Glassie is a world-renowned folklorist, known for publishing widely in the fields of material culture and vernacular architecture. He has written twenty books and received numerous awards for his work, including the Haney Prize in the Social Sciences and the Life Achievement Award of the American Folklore Society. Glassie's inspiring career has not gone unnoticed — a documentary on his fieldwork, Henry Glassie: Field Work, made its debut last September at the Toronto Film Festival. The film will be shown at the IU Cinema in April, with Glassie and his wife, Professor Pravina Shukla, scheduled to make an appearance.
I never set out to be a photographer of conflict and tragedy—famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia and wars on five continents at last count. In my early twenties, I saw enough blood, heard enough lies from military and civilian officials, and lost close friends while serving as an officer in the United States Army in Vietnam. Back home and finishing graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971, I turned down a desk job in Saigon, capital of the former South Vietnam, as a picture editor with the Associated Press, the world’s largest news gathering agency. To my mind, if I was to ever again experience the constant fear of being killed, at least it would be looking through the lens of my Nikon cameras.
My work for National Geographic Magazine in places like Cambodia, where I was wounded in 1974, and in embattled corners from the world— the Middle East, Afghanistan, South Asia, Northern Ireland, and El Salvador—was often part of reporting larger global issues. For example, genocidal Khmer Rouge guerrillas fired rockets and mortars at innocent Cambodians receiving American food aid and I was in the middle of the mayhem, following a shipment of California rice for a story about the world hunger crisis. Fifty years on, we forget that Cambodia by 1974 was starving as the war in neighboring Vietnam spilled across its border, creating tens of thousands of refugees.
In another instance, I traveled the globe with the International Committee of the Red Cross, keepers of the Geneva Conventions, to document its humanitarian world in some 14 war zones. In El Salvador, about to return home after two weeks in the middle of the most violent conflict in the Western Hemisphere during the 1980s, the ICRC chief asked if I wanted to accompany doctors and nurses on a mission into the contested jungle to bring out a wounded Communist guerrilla fighter to a government hospital. She had a bullet in her brain. No one at National Geographic would have ever known if I had turned down this invitation of uncertain promise of more or better pictures. But it was my job. As it was, our convoy of Red Cross vehicles was fired upon by a Salvadorian or American helicopter, held up at rebel checkpoints, and twice forded a river seeded with mines.
That phrase—“it’s my job”—has been a constant beacon as I have looked at the dying in International Red Cross hospitals in Ethiopia in 1985 or at hundreds of children in Vietnam, born with heart-wrenching deformities as the result of residual dioxin in the environment—the active ingredient of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange that we Americans sprayed to deny Communist soldiers their jungle sanctuaries. In these and many other cases, it was my job, or calling, to take an unblinking look at the world’s heartaches. Or as I tell students, to be society’s professional eyewitness.
The author flying in a US Air Force F-16 fighter jet.
That drive to be a faithful eyewitness to some of the world’s headlines did not come naturally for a young man from a small town in Wisconsin. My first mentor, the late University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Wilmott Ragsdale—himself a former war correspondent—used to tell students, “Be bold and move toward the action.” In those days, the “action” was often violent anti-Vietnam War protests on the streets of Madison, but the lesson stuck. As I learned more about the great photojournalists of the twentieth century, another name stuck with me—Robert Capa. A Hungarian Jew born Endre Friedmann who took the nom de guerre Robert Capa, he moved from conflict to conflict—from Spain and China to North Africa and through Western Europe—until his beloved Paris was liberated from the Nazis. As I recount in Somewhere West of Lonely, Capa landed in the surf of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, with the first assault troops of the US First and Twenty-Ninth Infantry Divisions, which would suffer nearly four thousand casualties that fateful morning. Capa’s name and reputation for courage live on, in part through his famous aphorism that I have silently repeated to myself in some of the most difficult situations of my professional life: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
I tell students that the best foreign correspondents have a low threshold for injustice. It has been my privilege to work with a few and meet many. In Vietnam, Gloria Emerson of the New York Times wrote with what her newspaper called an “angry dignity.” She once nailed a general who asked subordinates to write him up for awards of valor for a battle that never happened. The author Frances FitzGerald reported the war first-hand for The Atlantic and the New Republic, then wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning history, Fire in the Lake, after researching modern Indochina in four languages. From both women, I learned to never, ever trust the government’s version of events without seeing things for yourself.
In my experience, it is not the pay or the awards that motivate war correspondents, but a sense of moral outrage at the obscenities of our times. I dedicated Somewhere West of Lonely to friends and colleagues to have been killed telling the stories of the world, including wars. These men and women accepted the risks “to help citizens be free and self-governing,” in the words of journalism textbook authors Tom Rosensteil and Bill Kovach. And to my mind, those few eloquent words summarize what our work should be about—to help citizens be free and self-governing.
Steve Raymer is a former National Geographic photojournalist who has captured it all through the lens of his camera. The National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri named him Magazine Photographer of the Year—one of photojournalism’s most coveted awards—for his reporting on the global hunger crisis. He has also been honored by the Overseas Press Club of America for international reporting requiring exceptional courage and is the winner of numerous first-place awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association. His books include Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Imperial Capital. His new book, Somewhere West of Lonely, will be available in April.
We are giving away a copy of new release Girl by Alona Frankel. Fill out the form below for a chance to win!
Alona Frankel was just two years old when Germany invaded Poland. After a Polish carpenter agreed to hide her parents but not her, Alona's parents desperately handed her over to a greedy woman who agreed to hide her only as long as they continued to send money. Isolated from her parents and living among pigs, horses, mice, and lice, Alona taught herself to read and drew on scraps of paper. The woman would send these drawings to Alona’s parents as proof that Alona was still alive.
In time, the money ran out and Alona was tossed into her parents’ hiding place, at this point barely recognizing them. After Poland’s liberation, Alona’s mother was admitted to a terminal hospital and Alona handed over to a wealthy, arrogant family of Jewish survivors who eventually cast her off to an orphanage. Despite these daily horrors and dangers surrounding her, Alona’s imagination could not be restrained.
A powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit, Girl is the story of a young girl’s self-preservation through a horrible war and its aftermath. Faithful to the perspective of the heroine herself, Frankel, now a world renowned children’s author and illustrator, reveals a little girl full of life in a terrible, evil world.
We are giving away a copy of new release Trapped in Iran by Samieh Hezari. Fill out the form below for a chance to win.
In 2009, Samieh Hezari made a terrible mistake. She flew from her adopted home of Ireland to her birthplace in Iran so her 14-month-old daughter, Rojha, could be introduced to the child’s father. When the violent and unstable father refused to allow his daughter to leave and demanded that Samieh renew their relationship, a two-week holiday became a desperate five-year battle to get her daughter out of Iran. If Samieh could not do so before Rojha turned seven, the father could take sole custody—forever. The father’s harassment and threats intensified, eventually resulting in an allegation of adultery that was punishable by stoning, but Samieh—a single mother trapped in a country she saw as restricting the freedom and future of her daughter—never gave up, gaining inspiration from other Iranian women facing similar situations. As both the trial for adultery and her daughter’s seventh birthday loomed the Irish government was unable to help, leaving Samieh to attempt multiple illegal escapes in an unforgettable, epic journey to freedom. Trapped in Iran is the harrowing and emotionally gripping story of how a mother defied a man and a country to win freedom for her daughter.
Fill out the form below by September 15 to be entered to win a copy of Trapped in Iran.
John Bartlow Martin by Ray E. Boomhower has been racking up the awards and honors lately!
The first prize the book received was a Society of Midland Authors award in the biography and memoir category.
Then the biography was awarded first place in the nonfiction book category for the Society of Professional Journalists' "Best in Indiana Journalism" contest.
And just last week, Foreword Reviews announced that the book received honorable mention in the biography category in its INDIEFAB Awards.
Boomhower's biography on John Bartlow Martin, a prominent national journalist from Indiana, details Martin's life of fighting for the underdog and his career in journalism.
Martin was described as “the best living reporter,” the “ablest crime reporter in America,” and “one of America’s premier seekers of fact." In addition to reporting, he was also a key adviser and speechwriter for many presidential campaigns, including that of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
John Bartlow Martin has received praise from many publications, with the Chicago Tribune stating "it should be mandatory reading in journalism schools across the land." Boomhower outlines Martin's legacy and makes a great contribution to the history of journalism.
Congratulations to Ray Boomhower on these outstanding achievements! Learn more about the book in this podcast with the author.
We are pleased to announce that four of our books received 2015 INDIEFAB Awards and two books were finalists. Thousands of books are entered in the contest sponsored by Foreword Reviews each year to be judged by a select group of librarians and booksellers from across the country. IU Press books won one silver and three honorable mention awards, along with two finalists. Our winners include:
Silver Winner for Political Science The Snowden Reader Edited by David P. Fidler Foreword by Sumit Ganguly
When Edward Snowden began leaking NSA documents in June 2013, his actions sparked impassioned debates about electronic surveillance, national security, and privacy in the digital age. The Snowden Reader looks at Snowden’s disclosures and their aftermath.
Stunning photographs mark the centennial of the Hoosier state park system with a visual celebration of the parks’ scenery, wildlife, recreation, and history.
By examining rich archival materials including a film series produced by the Klan and a wealth of documents, newspaper clippings, and manuals, Rice uncovers the fraught history of the Klan as a local force that manipulated the American film industry to extend its reach across the country.
During the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the “big slicks.” Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as “the best living reporter,” the “ablest crime reporter in America,” and “one of America’s premier seekers of fact.”
Though relatively fleeting in rock history, the "RJC moment" forged a new vision of Jewish identity in the contemporary world, one that sought to restore the bond between past and present, to interrogate the limits of racial and gender categories, and to display the tensions between secularism and observance, traditional values and contemporary concerns.
Finalist for Popular Culture Letters to Santa Claus The Elves Foreword by Pat Koch, Head Elf Afterword by Emily Weisner Thompson
Over 80 years of letters and envelopes addressed to Santa Claus capture the hopes and dreams of children and adults. “A touching gift book that also offers an unusual window into American history.”—Library Journal
In The Doc and the Duchess: The Life and Legacy of George H. A. Clowes, Alexander W. Clowes details the life of his grandfather and the legacy he left behind. George H. A. Clowes played a pivotal role in the development of the insulin program at the Eli Lilly Company. This biography is an account of his life, from his childhood in England through his death in 1958.
Dr. Alexander Clowes died of cancer in 2015, shortly before his book was published. In this interview, his wife Susan Detweiler discusses the life of her husband, his grandfather's contributions to the medical field, and the legacy of his work and philanthropy.
In the acknowledgments section of the book, your husband gives you credit for suggesting that he should write a biography of his grandfather. Why did you encourage him to do this?
When I retired from my full-time medical practice, I spent two years obtaining an MFA in nonfiction writing during which time I wrote a book. My husband Alec watched me do this, and we talked about my experience in the MFA extensively. For a long time, Alec had been interested in his forbearer, Sir William Clowes, surgeon to Queen Elizabeth I and the author of the first book on surgery written in English (as opposed to Latin), published in 1588. After a fair amount of research, Alec concluded that there was no new information on Sir Wm. Clowes. But by then, the idea of writing a book had captured his attention. I suggested he do one on George Henry Alexander Clowes, known as GHAC to the family. GHAC was mentioned in many books about the early history of insulin but none were specifically about him or focused on the significant American (i.e., Clowes’s and Lilly’s) contribution to making insulin rapidly available as a purified, standardized therapeutic product. Alec knew his grandfather and had extensive family archival material available. I encouraged him because Alec was so obviously the right person to do this—plus he was a physician and scientist and able to understand the scientific side of his grandfather’s career.
What kind of relationship did your husband have with his grandfather?
Alec spent every summer of his childhood in Woods Hole with his grandparents living in the large family home that GHAC built. So he was with his grandparents on a daily basis for three months of the year and also during the winter holidays. He knew them well. Alec was 11 years old and the oldest grandson when GHAC died, old enough to remember his grandparents in a personal way, especially his grandmother. He caddied for GHAC when he played golf and spent lots of time with his grandmother. Alec had a positive and affectionate relationship with each grandparent.
Did Dr. Clowes influence your husband’s decision to go into medicine?
I think Alec’s decision to go into medicine was primarily from his innate curiosity about science. Every summer he went to science camp at Woods Hole and he loved science throughout his schooling. He academically excelled in science. It was intellectually a good fit. His father, George Clowes, was a physician so that no doubt provided some influence though I do not believe George Clowes ever overtly encouraged Alec to go into medicine. I’m sure his grandfather did not either. Alec initially planned a career in physics but found his aptitude better suited to medicine in his last year of college. And although he planned to do pure research when he was in medical school, it was not until his residency in surgery that he surprised himself with how much he enjoyed patient care. In the end, he combined these two elements, pure research and surgery, into a career that he found very satisfying and intellectually fulfilling.
What surprising things did your husband discover about his grandfather during the course of his research for the book?
In terms of GHAC’s personal life, Alec was surprised by how loving and sentimental his grandfather was to his wife and his sister. Alec had access to the personal love letters written to his grandmother during their separations prior to their marriage and then occasionally after marriage. The letters by the grandmother didn’t survive; GHAC apparently didn’t save them, but the grandmother saved every one of his. The letters were flowery and full of expressions of romantic love. GHAC was also very attached to his sister and mother and wrote them many devoted letters.
In terms of his professional life, Alec was impressed with the depth of his grandfather’s research and professional standing prior to his joining the Lilly Company. He was a founding member of several important cancer research societies and highly regarded for his original observations. GHAC also remained an active investigator with a fairly robust career in research after his and Lilly’s contribution to the development of insulin. Alec was also impressed with his grandfather’s team-building skills, not only at Lilly and the MBL, but additionally in his philanthropic activities. GHAC knew how to get a job done be it in science or philanthropy.
One of Dr. Clowes’s major contributions to medicine was in the treatment of diabetes. Describe Dr. Clowes's role in the development of insulin.
A major portion of the book is devoted to GHAC’s role in the development of insulin. In short, GHAC had the prepared scientific mind and experience to recognize instantly the importance of the discovery of insulin. He made a bee-line to learn about it and contact the Canadian discoverers on behalf of Lilly. Then he was persistent in winning a collaboration with Toronto to manufacture insulin on terms fair to both the discoverers and Lilly. The Lilly Research Laboratory that he directed then markedly improved the method of manufacturing insulin resulting in a purified product that could be mass-produced and delivered to countless diabetics desperate for the product. This monumental feat was accomplished in record time—approximately 18 months.
Do you think Dr. Clowes has received enough recognition for the importance of his work in the development of insulin and his other scientific achievements? Why or why not?
This is a difficult question to answer. GHAC probably has not received as much recognition as he deserves. Banting and Macleod rightly deserve the credit for the discovery of insulin, but GHAC rightly deserves the credit for bringing insulin as a therapeutic product to the thousand upon thousands of diabetics desperate to receive it. Diabetes was a death sentence in 1922; GHAC’s work reversed that sentence. Had he not worked out a successful collaboration with the Canadians and had he not rapidly and markedly improved the techniques for manufacturing insulin, it would have taken much longer for insulin to become available to the world. Many, many lives were saved, most of them children.
In addition to being known in the medical field, the Clowes name is also recognized because of the family’s charitable giving. Why was philanthropy important to Dr. & Mrs. Clowes?
GHAC was a sophisticated individual who had lived in London and Germany with exposure to a breadth of culture far beyond that which most people in the Indianapolis of his day had known. He enjoyed art and music and wished to share that appreciation with others. He also was in the fortunate position of being relatively wealthy at a time when others were not (due to the Depression) and this brought out his basically generous nature. Generosity and stewardship of your community were Victorian values from his childhood that he carried within his personality throughout his life. His wife, Edith, was also very much of this mindset. As a young woman in Buffalo, she did charitable work with poor women and children, activities she continued throughout her life.
What impact has their philanthropy had on Indianapolis and beyond?
During the lifetimes of GHAC and Edith, they were major leaders in Indianapolis in art, music, education, and religion: the Clowes collection of old masters at the IMA, Clowes Memorial Hall for the symphony orchestra, rebuilding the episcopal church, starting the Orchard School, providing early support to Planned Parenthood, to name just a few of their major contributions. By establishing The Clowes Fund, GHAC and Edith founded a permanent source for funding philanthropic work within Indianapolis. Over the years as the second, third, and fourth generations of the family have become active in The Clowes Fund, the philanthropic reach of the fund has been extended to include New England and Seattle where family members now live. The mission of the fund has also been enlarged to include social service organizations in addition to art and music.
Your husband finished this book as he was fighting his own battle with cancer. Describe what it meant to him to get this book published despite everything he was going through.
Fortunately, the majority of the manuscript was finished before Alec became ill. He was able to continue to work on this book for about six months after he received his devastating diagnosis of glioblastoma, devoting as much time as he could to completing and editing the manuscript. It meant a great deal to him to know that the book would definitely be published. I personally shall forever be grateful to Dwight Burlingame for his assistance and to Indiana University Press for its help in expediting the decision to be the publisher of the book. Alec realized that the book would be part of his legacy to his family and to the history of insulin—and medicine in general.
Watch Alexander Clowes discuss The Doc and The Duchess and his grandfather's legacy in this video:
Earlier this month, Independent Publisher named the medal winners in its 20th annual IPPY Awards. These awards were established to bring more attention to the important work published by independent authors and publishers. We're pleased to announce that four IU Press books won IPPY Awards, including:
The medal-winning books will be celebrated May 10 during the annual BookExpo America publishing convention in Chicago.
Independent Publisher prides itself on "Recognizing Excellence in Independent Publishing," and we think these titles are excellent as well! Congratulations to our authors and their great books!
Larry Lockridge discusses his father’s book Raintree County in the following guest post for our Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf series, which appears courtesy of the Indiana Humanities' Next Indiana Bookshelf. Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s novel was selected to be a part of the Next Indiana Bookshelf, which was created by the Indiana Center for the Book (at the Indiana State Library) and Indiana Humanities to encourage Hoosiers to think and talk about the present and future of Indiana during the upcoming state bicentennial in 2016. Each title has a strong connection to Indiana, whether it is set in the state or written by a Hoosier author, and includes poetry, nonfiction, and fiction books.
In his 1948 novel Raintree County, my father Ross Lockridge, Jr. unabashedly attempted to write the Great American Novel, not just the Great Hoosier Novel, but the original setting is, for the most part, Henry County, Indiana. The protagonist, John Wickliff Shawnessy, is modeled on my paternal great-grandfather, John Wesley Shockley of Straughn, Indiana. He spends a modest life as a Hoosier schoolmaster who writes poetry on the side as an idealist who quietly nurses the highest literary aspirations. But he is too mired in this own tragic past to write his way toward a visionary future, to write the epic of America.
In Raintree County Lockridge attempted to write that future for him, as a literary prophet with a strong sense of nostalgia but with a mission also—to restore to American life its fading mythic sense of things, anchored in immediate and celebratory sensate experience. Finishing his novel just as World War II was coming to an end, Lockridge thought this mythic sense of things was greatly imperiled by commerce and industry, by the lack of what Matthew Arnold called “sweetness and light” and Northrop Frye “the myth of freedom.” As the bestselling novel in the early months of 1948, Raintree County seemed for a time to answer to a hunger in the populus for American meaning beyond the banalities of Main Street. Lockridge especially emphasized the values of the landscape and its mythic enhancements. How can we regain a sense of the miraculous and a reverence for the landscape when the ancient river gods are taking flight at the coming of the railroads? Shawnessy asks this kind of question again and again, and Raintree County has thus been called the “foremost American environmental novel.”
I feel that Raintree County mingles history with prophecy in a way full of implication for “The Next Indiana.” The “endlessly courageous dreamers” whom Ross Lockridge speaks of may not be found in our politicians—and politicians with the exception of Lincoln come off poorly in Raintree County. Rather, it is in the rank and file of ordinary Hoosiers where the extraordinary must be found as we take stock of our collective heritage, find the uses of the past, maintain our rivers and lakes, and work toward what Lockridge called “the gigantic labor by which the earth is rescued again and again from chaos and old night.”
Larry Lockridge is Professor of English at New York University and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is author of Coleridge the Moralist, The Ethics of Romanticism, and essays on biography and British Romantic literature. For Shade of the Raintree he received the MidAmerica Award, given by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. For more information on Raintree County, visit the website maintained by Ross Lockridge III, www.raintreecounty.com.
Our Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf series will continue every month as we count down to 200th anniversary of the state on December 11, 2016. IN Writing author Douglas A. Wissing will blog for us in March.
Today is the beginning of Black History Month! To celebrate, we offer the following reading selections from our books and journals. We hope they will help enhance your understanding of important issues in African American studies.
Forthcoming in paperback Oscar Micheaux and His Circle African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser, Editors and Curators
"An extremely valuable contribution to the history of African American art." —Toni Morrison
In this important collection, prominent scholars examine the surviving silent films of Oscar Micheaux—the most prolific African-American filmmaker to date and a filmmaking giant of the silent period.
Roland Hayes The Legacy of an American Tenor Christopher A. Brooks and Robert Sims
Gold winner, 2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards, Performing Arts and Music
"Largely forgotten today outside specialist circles, the African-American tenor Roland Hayes (1887–1976) was a much admired and internationally celebrated artist during his lifetime. As the authors of this substantial and well-documented new biography suggest, a reluctance to broadcast and a relatively limited recording career have prevented wider circulation of his fame in our own day. . . The authors detail his long career meticulously, as well as his complicated private life." —BBC Music Magazine
Misremembering Dr. King Revisiting the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Jennifer J. Yanco
2015 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection
"A succinct eighty-one-page reminder that Americans currently experience collective amnesia when it comes to Martin Luther King Jr." —H-Net
"Yanco’s important book is a reminder that when we raise a transformative figure to a pedestal, we mustn’t overlook their most challenging beliefs, even (or especially) if those beliefs force us to realize how far we still have to go." —Biographile
Racing to Justice Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society john a. powell
Renowned social justice advocate john a. powell persuasively argues that we have not achieved a post-racial society and that there is much work to do to redeem the American promise of inclusive democracy. Racing to Justice challenges us to replace attitudes and institutions that promote and perpetuate social suffering with those that foster relationships and a way of being that transcends disconnection and separation.
“Can You Save Me?: Black Male Superheroes in Hollywood Film” Tia C. M. Tyree and Liezille J. Jacobs Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn 2014), pp. 1-24
Film is an important component of society and works to influence how Blacks are viewed and constructed in the world. Today, as in the past, media are spaces of struggle over power and meaning in our culture as well as mediums where dominant power relations are reproduced. American cinema has normalized Whiteness of superheroes in action films, classic examples of which include Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Black superheroes were constructed in films. This project used the Afrocentric approach as a lens to uncover moments when films play on the unconscious adoption of Western worldviews and perspectives on race and gender roles.
“Afro-Dog” Bénédicte Boisseron Transition No. 118, I Can Be Lightning (2015), pp. 15-31
Bénédicte Boisseron observes that black people and dogs have often been at odds in the fight for freedom and civil rights. Tracing the historical interaction between blacks and dogs, she explores the tremendous impact perceptions of goodness or badness have had from slavery through today’s Black Lives Matter movement.
“Cinema as Political Activism: Contemporary Meanings in The Spook Who Sat by the Door” Marilyn Yaquinto Black Camera Vol. 6, No. 1 (Fall 2014), pp. 5-33
In 1973 Sam Greenlee created a film based on his controversial 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door. It is often mislabeled as blaxploitation—an intentional tactic on his part at the time to attract a distributor. The FBI then purportedly short-circuited Spook's box office run, given its tale of a black CIA operative who returns to his Chicago community and uses his training to organize and execute a guerilla war against oppressive conditions that keep people trapped in urban ghettoes.
Considered by producer Tim Reid to be one of the most significant black films ever made, the film was digitally remastered and rereleased in 2003, and was again celebrated as insightful while at the same time vilified for its depiction of violence rooted in race-based anger. The film endures as a historical text about black militancy in the early 1970s, but also as a study of the revolutionary potential of oppressed peoples anywhere and the use of cinema as a potential tool of liberation.
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