Duke University Press Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century

Product Description The advent of the internet and the availability of social media and digital downloads have expanded the creation, distribution, and consumption of Black cultural production as never before. At the same time, a new generation of Black public intellectuals who speak to the relationship between race, politics, and popular culture has come into national prominence. The contributors to Are You Entertained? address these trends to consider what culture and blackness mean in the twenty-first century's digital consumer economy. In this collection of essays, interviews, visual art, and an artist statement the contributors examine a range of topics and issues, from music, white consumerism, cartoons, and the rise of Black Twitter to the NBA's dress code, dance, and Moonlight. Analyzing the myriad ways in which people perform, avow, politicize, own, and love blackness, this volume charts the shifting debates in Black popular culture scholarship over the past quarter century while offering new avenues for future scholarship. Contributors. Takiyah Nur Amin, Patricia Hill Collins, Kelly Jo Fulkerson-Dikuua, Simone C. Drake, Dwan K. Henderson, Imani Kai Johnson, Ralina L. Joseph, David J. Leonard, Emily J. Lordi, Nina Angela Mercer, Mark Anthony Neal, H. Ike Okafor-Newsum, Kinohi Nishikawa, Eric Darnell Pritchard, Richard Schur, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Vincent Stephens, Lisa B. Thompson, Sheneese Thompson Review "The book is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary field of African American studies as well as to literature and sociology and to the overall study of performance, culture, media, and Blackness. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals."--T. N. Allen "Choice" (12/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Are You Entertained? is a thoughtfully constructed collection of scholarly work on blackness and subjectivity and their constant tensions with popular culture and mass media. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson do a superb job of weaving together these shards of insightful criticism and analysis into a tapestry of fascinating commentary by some of the most dynamic voices in the field."--John Jennings, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside About the Author Simone C. Drake is Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University and author of When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making. Dwan K. Henderson is on the English and American Studies faculty at the Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia.