51.1, Black Privacy
Black Privacy collects reflections on, provocations around, demands for, acute analyses of, and uncertain futures for Black privacy in the face of anti-Black violence, surveillance, and hypervisibility. This special issue interrogates the history of Black privacy in its impossible antebellum and Jim Crow forms, its present urgency in the face of spectacular visibility, and the […]
50.4, Black Girlhood
The Black Scholar continues to celebrate the journal’s 50th Anniversary with the release of its latest issue, Black Girlhood, which highlights the significance, challenges and beauty of Black girls. There is a growing body of scholarship on the experiences of Black girls, from their representation in the past and present to their lived experiences today. The intersectionality […]
50.3, What Was Black Studies?
Black lives matter. Black thought matters. Black writing matters. Black writing about Black lives matters. Black scholarship, criticism, and research matter. Black memory matters, Black history perhaps most of all. These words have been the credo of The Black Scholar from the apocalyptic year of 1969 to the, well, apocalyptic year of 2020. And so, […]
50.2, At the Limits of Desire: Black Radical Pleasure
At the Limits of Desire initiates The Black Scholar’s Fiftieth Anniversary celebration by engaging with Black sexuality studies in order to reimagine the field anew. Guest-editor Kirin Wachter-Grene and TBS Editor-in-Chief Louis Chude-Sokei, along with artists, scholars, pedagogues, kinksters, and sex workers alike both in and out of academia, continue the journal’s mission to cut […]
50.1, Going Imperial
Going Imperial inaugurates the fiftieth volume of The Black Scholar. The issue serves as both a testament to the journal’s longevity and a meditation on the Black intellectual tradition that serves as its raison d’être. At the center of this volume is Jeffrey C. Stewart’s The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, winner of […]
49.4, Black Performance II: Knowing and Being
Black Performance I: Subject and Method collects research that shows how performance can act as an optic and object of study. The authors’ diverse subjects reveal resonances of the past in performance in music and movement, poetry, media, art, museums, memory, and thought. The research in Black Performance II: Knowing and Being further demonstrates the […]
49.3, Black Performance I: Subject and Method
This first of a two-part Special Issue on Black Performance samples diverse subjects and methodologies, ranging from theater and dance to art installation, music, literature, film, digital images, and social interaction. Edited by Stephanie Leigh Batiste, this issue positions Black performance as a site for solidifying the prescience and critical sharpness of Black creativity in […]
49.2, Black Masculinities and the Matter of Vulnerability
This special issue contributes to studies of Black masculinities by centering the matter of vulnerability. It expands concerns about vulnerability in black masculinities studies from more spectacular forms of violence to consider the interior lives of Black masculine subjects and more quotidian and privatized forms of violence and violation. The essays explore a range of […]
“Outcasts and Indigent Sons of Africa”: New York’s Nineteenth Century Chefs, Caterers, and Restauranteurs, by Diane M. Spivey
The culinary history of America has erased the true contribution of African Americans to American cuisine in every phase of its development, and continues to pigeonhole African American cuisine in the category of soul food, used as a type of cultural and culinary shackle. Moreover, there are numerous African American women and men who have […]
Now Available: 49.1, Black Queer and Trans* Aesthetics
This issue on Black Queer and Trans* Aesthetics is aimed at collecting avant-garde writing from Black queer trans scholars on the aesthetics of Black everyday life, Black art, and Black critical thought. The essays in this special collection are all focused on 20th and 21st century US Black art, frameworks, and aesthetics. The essay topics include archives of Black femme […]