BOOK NEWS: Examining representations of blackness in Black literary and filmic texts

Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness

Edited by Charlene Regester, Cynthia Baron, Ellen C. Scott, Terri Simone Francis, and Robin G. Vander

U of Mississippi P, 2023

ISBN: 9781496848857

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/I/Intersecting-Aesthetics

Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness illuminates cultural and material trends that shaped Black film adaptations during the twentieth century. Contributors to this collection reveal how Black literary and filmic texts are sites of negotiation between dominant and resistant perspectives. Their work ultimately explores the effects racial perspectives have on film adaptations and how race-inflected cultural norms have influenced studio and independent film depictions. Several chapters analyze how self-censorship and industry censorship affect Black writing and the adaptations of Black stories in early to mid-twentieth-century America. Using archival material, contributors demonstrate the ways commercial obstacles have led Black writers and white-dominated studios to mask Black experiences. Other chapters document instances in which Black writers and directors navigate cultural norms and material realities to realize their visions in literary works, independent films, and studio productions. Through uncovering patterns in Black film adaptations, Intersecting Aesthetics reveals themes, aesthetic strategies, and cultural dynamics that rightfully belong to accounts of film adaptation.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

The volume considers travelogue and autobiography sources along with the fiction of Black authors H. G. de Lisser, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, and Walter Mosley. Contributors examine independent films The Love Wanga (1936) and The Devil’s Daughter (1939); Melvin Van Peebles's first feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967); and the Senegalese film Karmen Geï (2001). They also explore studio-era films In This Our Life (1942), The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Lydia Bailey (1952), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954) and post-studio films The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft (1971), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).

"Intersecting Aesthetics is a pivotal work from leading scholars in African American film studies. The influence of this collection will reach long into the future." - Gerald R. Butters Jr., coeditor of Beyond Blaxploitation

"A riveting take on overlooked chapters in Hollywood history" - Publishers Weekly

Charlene Regester is associate professor in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and affiliate faculty with the Global Cinema Minor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is author of African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900–1960 (2010) and coeditor with Mae Henderson of The Josephine Baker Critical Reader (2017). Her essays have appeared in In the Shadow of “The Birth of a Nation”: Racism, Reception and Resistance (2023), Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited (2021), and Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity (2020).

Cynthia Baron is professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University. She is author of Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre (2016) and Denzel Washington (2015). She is coauthor of Acting Indie: Industry, Aesthetics, and Performance (2020), Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation (2014), and Reframing Screen Performance (2008). She is coeditor of More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Film Performance (2004), editor of the Journal of Film and Video, and BGSU Research Scholar of Excellence 2017–2020.

Ellen C. Scott is associate professor and head of the Cinema and Media Studies Program in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2016, she was awarded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholars Grant for her project “Cinema’s Peculiar Institution,” which investigated the representation of slavery on screen. She is author of Cinema Civil Rights: Race, Repression, and Regulation in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2015). Her publications appear in Film History, African American Review, American History, Black Camera, and other journals.

Terri Simone Francis is associate professor of cinematic arts at the University of Miami. She is author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism (2021), which illustrates Baker’s conscious shaping of her celebrity and African Americans’ interest in cinema and efforts to gain equality. Her research appears in Feminist Media Histories, Film History, Film Quarterly, Black Camera, and other journals. In her former role as director of the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University, she curated series on Classic Black Films of the 1970s, Black Cinematic Imaginations of Outer Space, and other topics.

Robin G. Vander is associate professor in the Department of English at Xavier University of Louisiana. She is coeditor of Percival Everett: Writing Other/Wise (2014) and Perspectives on Percival Everett (2013). She is coeditor of two issues of the Xavier Review: “Celebrating Jesmyn Ward: Critical Readings and Scholarly Responses” (2018) and “Reading the Intersections of Sex and Spirit in the Creative Arts” (2007). Her article “The African American Population in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina” appears in The Review of Black Political Economy (2011).