Routledge Violence from Slavery to #BlackLivesMatter: African American History and Representation

Violence from Slavery to #BlackLivesMatter brings together perspectives on violence and its representation in African American history from slavery to the present moment. Contributors explore how violence, signifying both an instrument of the white majority’s power and a modality of black resistance, has been understood and articulated in primary materials that range from slave narrative through "lynching plays" and Richard Wright’s fiction to contemporary activist poetry, and from photography of African American suffering through Blaxploitation cinema and Spike Lee’s films to rap lyrics and performances. Diverse both in their period coverage and their choice of medium for discussion, the 11 essays are unified by a shared concern to unpack violence’s multiple meanings for black America. Underlying the collection, too, is not only the desire to memorialize past moments of black American suffering and resistance, but, in politically timely fashion, to explore their connections to our current conjuncture. Review "This remarkable collection of essays offers a series of timely interventions in the study of violence and its representation in African American history. It breaks new ground in all kinds of ways, helping us to understand how the bitter and often traumatic experiences of African Americans, from the establishment of the American republic right up to the present day, have shaped a whole range of cultural forms and profoundly influenced the way African Americans identify themselves. The African American activist, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, famously claimed in 1967, ‘Violence is as American as cherry pie.’ This book offers support for that claim in terms that are at once passionately committed and rigorously critical." -- Richard Gray, Fellow of the British Academy About the Author Andrew Dix is Lecturer in American Literature and Film in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, UK. Peter Templeton is Honorary Fellow at Loughborough University, UK, teaching both in the School of the Arts, English and Drama and the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.