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An anthology of essays devoted to the examination of filmmaker Julie Dash's ground-breaking film, Daughters of the Dust, this book celebrates the importance and influence of this film and positions it within the discourses of Black Feminism, Womanism, the LA Rebellion, New Black Cinema, Great Migration, The Black Arts tradition, Oral History, African American/Black/African diasporan Studies, and Black film/cinema studies. Employing a transdisciplinary approach to examining the film, the anthology includes chapters which examine unique aspects/themes of the film. At the core of each chapter, however, is a recognition of the influence of Black feminist/Womanist theory and politics and African American history-from enslavement to freedom/Reconstruction, Black political identity and liberation movement(s)-and African/ African diasporan cosmology on Dash's work and how all work in concert in her masterful narrative of Black family, 20th Black women's identities, and the tension between modernity/tradition experienced by Gullah-Geechee people at the turn of the 20th century.
List of contents
List of Figures - Acknowledgements - Patricia Williams Lessane: Introduction - Capturing the Canon: Julie Dash and the Black Arts and Black Feminist Traditions - Patricia Williams Lessane: Memory, Meaning, and Gullah Sensibilities: The Black Art Aesthetics of Julie Dash and Jonathan Green - Ayana I. Karanja: Inspiration in the Dark Space: Julie Dash's Re-Visioning of Time and Place in Daughters of the Dust - Heike Raphael-Hernandez: Overcoming the Trauma of the Gaze in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust - Sensory Ignition and Cultural Memory: Visual Art and Gastronomy in Daughters of the Dust - Katie M. White: Coming Home to Good Gumbo: Gullah Foodways and the Sensory in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust. - Corrie Claiborne: Decorating the Decorations: Daughters of the Dust and the Aesthetics of the Quilt - The Sacred Emerge: The Witness, the Healed, and Daughters of the Dust - Karen M. Gagne: "I Arrived Late to this Book": Teaching Sociology with Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, the Novel - Sharon D.Johnson: Conscious Daughters: Psychological Migration, Individuation, and the Declaration of Black Female Identity in Daughters of the Dust - Tiffany Lethabo King: Reading Nana Peazant's Palms: Punctuating Readings of Blue - The Power of Place in Shaping Identity and Artistic Cultivation - Marcella "Marcy" De Veaux: In Search of Solid Ground: Oral Histories of the Great Migration, from the Carolinas to New England - Silvia Pilar Castro-Borrego: Motherlands as Gendered Spaces: Cultural Identity, Mythic Memory, and Wholeness in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust - Julie Dash: Making Daughters of the Dust (Revised) - Farah Jasmine Griffin: Epilogue - Contributors - Index.
About the author
Patricia Williams Lessane is Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Morgan State University. She is a cultural anthropologist who has examined the impact of race, class, and gender in her work at cultural institutions including the College of Charleston's Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Museum of Science and Industry, and The Field Museum in Chicago. She is a Fulbright Specialist and holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from University of Illinois at Chicago, a Master of Arts Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College, and a BA in English from Fisk
Summary
This book celebrates the importance and influence of Daughters of the Dust and positions it within the discourses of Black Feminism, Womanism, the LA Rebellion, New Black Cinema, Great Migration, The Black Arts tradition, Oral History, African American/Black/ African diasporan Studies, and Black film/cinema studies.
