Left of Black S3:E11 | Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia

Left of Black S3:E11 | Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia

November 26, 2012

On Thursday, November 8, 2012, HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) sponsored Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia:  A Symposium on the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. 

The event featured Jack Halberstam, Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California, and author of the recently published Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon);  Marlon Ross, Professor on English at the University of Virginia and author  of  Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era (NYU Press); Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Utah and author of Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer”; and Sharon Patricia Holland, Associate Professor of English and African & African American Studies at Duke University and the author of the just published The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke University Press). 

The event was moderated by Left of Black host and Duke University Professor, Mark Anthony Neal.

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Left of Blackis a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in  @ iTunes U

Wal-Mart Worker Uprising: Protests Held At 1,000 Stores on Black Friday

Democracy Now

A wave of historic protests struck the retail giant Wal-Mart on Black Friday -- the busiest shopping day of the year. Workers and their supporters demonstrated at more than 1,000 stores. The Wal-Mart protests were organized in part by OUR Walmart, an organization backed by the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union. Nine people, including three Wal-Mart workers, were arrested at a protest in Los Angeles after they blocked traffic. We broadcast the voices of protesters in Secaucus, New Jersey, and speak to Josh Eidelson, a contributing writer for The Nation magazine.

Anita Hill: Fiscal Cliff Cuts are 'Stark Economic Realities' for Women

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The Mythic Power Of Bessie Smith

The Mythic Power Of Bessie Smith  

by Kevin Whitehead | Fresh Air | WHYY 

Vocalist Bessie Smith's musical career, spanning 1923-33, has been collected in a new 10-CD box set, Bessie Smith: The Complete Columbia Recordings.

Recorded shortly before the 1927 floods that devastated the Mississippi River valley, Bessie Smith had written "Back Water Blues" in sympathy with flood victims she'd encountered near Cincinnati months earlier, who, the story goes, asked her to bear witness to their pain. Even so, having a song ready for folks along the Mississippi just when they needed some empathy speaks to her mythic power — her ability to give voice to her listeners' tribulations and yearnings.

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Mark Anthony Neal @ UMass-Amherst on Thursday November 29th

Duke University Scholar to Discuss ‘Social Justice in the Age of Social Media’ Nov. 29

Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal will give a lecture titled “What if the Greensboro Four Had Twitter? Social Justice in the Age of Social Media” on Thursday, Nov. 29 at 5 p.m. in 904-08 Campus Center.

Neal is professor of black popular culture in the department of African and African-American studies at Duke. He has written and lectured extensively on black popular culture and music, black masculinity, sexism and homophobia in black communities, and black digital humanities. His books include Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002); Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003); New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005); and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, forthcoming from NYU Press in April. He is also co-editor (with Murray Foreman) of That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2nd Edition, 2011).

Neal hosts the weekly video webcast Left of Black. He is the founder and managing editor of the blog NewBlackMan (in Exile) and a frequent commentator on National Public Radio. He also contributes to several online media outlets like The Huffington Post and Ebony.com, and he is featured in several documentaries including Byron Hurt’s Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.

The event is supported by the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development's Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies; Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies; Department of English, Department of Communication and the dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

Simon Says—Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Great Hopes and Disappointments

Jesse Jackson Jr.: Great Hopes And Disappointments 

by Scott Simon | NPR's Weekend Edition

Jesse Jackson Jr. has a famous name and fabulous contacts, and had what looked like boundless prospects when he was first on the national stage at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy had appeared to talk about the legacy of their late father, the president. But a few nights later, Jackson took the podium to present his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and said, "My name is Jesse Louis Jackson Jr., and I also proudly carry a great American name."

It seemed a signal, years before President Obama was elected, that America had grown to embrace a diversity of names beyond Kennedy, Bush or Roosevelt, but also a family that grew from the soil of the American civil rights movement.

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Political Scientist Lester Spence Gets "Warmed Up" on the MHP Show

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