From minstrelsy to hip-hop, the black performer has always been entangled in a complex network of branding, packaging, and promotion. The black body is cultural capital and in hip-hop, the black thug and his dangerous body are the fetishized objects of desire. Despite these exploitative constraints, artists find spaces to enact what little resistance is possible. In the following report, I perform a close reading and close listening of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Otis.” Paying particular attention to the intersections of the visual and the aural, I find that Jay-Z and West encode desire, pleasure, and imagination beneath boastful rhymes and material opulence. Jay-Z and West adopt American symbols of prosperity and freedom and, in disruptive fashion, resignify black masculinity in the cultural imagination. Soul sound, as intoned through Otis Redding and James Brown, lends a politics of brotherhood and radicalism to Jay-Z and West’s articulation of affective black masculinity. I employ a collage-like network of theoretical frames that span performance, sound, and literary theory to trace how race and gender performance codes a discourse of disruption. I find that “Otis” is a type a blueprint—an instruction manual for youth of color to deconstruct, innovate, and feel deeply. Through linguistic and performative codes, Jay-Z and West create a safe space, a cipher for men of color to desire and, in turn, experience pleasure. I trace how Jay-Z and West move closer to a practice of hip-hop feminism and, in a field notorious for rampant homophobia, misogyny, and violence—that’s remarkable. / text

Student Number : 9900639H - MA research report - School of Dramatic Art - Faculty of Humanities / This report is concerned with analysing the cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and its articulation of black masculinity in two post apartheid South African films – Wooden Camera directed by Ntshaveni Wa Luruli and Tsotsi directed by Gavin Hood. I argue that the ‘township space’ has become a fetishised cinematic trope in post-apartheid South African filmmaking. Cinematic representation’s of the space of the township articulates the performance of black identity associated with criminality, excessive violence and deviancy relegating the black experience to one of ‘otherness’. In this report I argue that the ‘Cinematic Township’ predetermines a black identity that appears to be shot through a colonial lens, or from an ‘outsider’s point-of-view’. This space developed on the fringes of major cities was developed - through Afrikaner Nationalist Ideologies - as a ‘port’ into major cities. The township was constructed through a process of ‘othering’ and is often represented as the manageable part of modernity for ‘black identity’. Cinematically there appears to be a ‘fixing’ or ‘freezing’ of an authentic black experience within the ‘township space’ that essentialises black identity and the black experience. Apart from analysing the cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and the manner in which space determines sexuality and identity, this report speaks to issues of representation and who can claim the rights to representation in post-apartheid South Africa (Thiong’o, 2000 and Axel, 1999). The South African filmmaking landscape is unique because of the interesting mix of ‘white’ and ‘black’ filmmakers. This raises questions about ‘Racialised Africanness’ and what are the implications for ‘African whiteness’? These are important issues in relation to the South African post-apartheid body politic and the role of the filmmaker in post-apartheid South African cinema. In this paper I suggest that the cinematic township is representative of the fetishisation of the ‘township space’ in the imagination and representations of post-apartheid filmmakers. The ‘township space’ has transcended its political memory and appears to be invested with nostalgia and myth-making.

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The purpose of this study was to explore how Black men and women negotiate ideas about masculine performances within the context of romantic relationships. The New York Times Bestselling book Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, which communicates a particularly patriarchal understanding of masculinity, was used as a point of reference. Six focus groups were conducted with 28 Black males and females between the ages of 19-60. Three general conclusions about masculine performances within Black male/female relationships were drawn from the findings.

The purpose of this study was to explore how Black men and women negotiate ideas about masculine performances within the context of romantic relationships. The New York Times Bestselling book Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, which communicates a particularly patriarchal understanding of masculinity, was used as a point of reference. Six focus groups were conducted with 28 Black males and females between the ages of 19-60. Three general conclusions about masculine performances within Black male/female relationships were drawn from the findings.

This study examines my activist journey in developing a grassroots men's antiviolence and multi-generational mentoring group called the Progressive Masculinities Mentors. I draw upon Athena Mutua's intersectional vision of Progressive Black Masculinities into motion which reimagines traditional black masculinity in ways that move beyond negative social scripts in order for black men to reach their full humanity. Modeled on the activist work of Ella Jo Baker, a community organizer, within the civil rights movement, I advocate principles and practices of grassroots community mentoring as a way to bring about social change. "The Ella Effect" refers to the practices, ideas, and life philosophies of Baker which both inspire and inform my activist work of mentoring young college age men and local boys to become progressive men. Hip Hop music and culture is employed as a pedagogical strategy to engage young black males about problematic issues of black masculinity in an effort to create alternative modes that communicate love, compassion, and hope.

This study expands literature on colorism and the monolithic emphasis on the experiences of women by investigating black men’s experience with skin tone discrimination. The investigator seeks to interrogate how black males experience colorism by exploring how familial, peer associations, and media shape black males’ understanding of their skin-tone; by asking; what messages, if any, enforcing colorism ideals they receive; as well as the frequency of and adherence to such messages. The investigator utilized focus groups to gather data. Sample was limited to 10 self-identifying African-American black men age 18 and older. Focus group data is analyzed through an intersectional perspective, and thematic coding is utilized for analysis. Findings suggest light skinned and dark skinned men experience colorism differently. Light skinned men noted blatant colorism and often felt they had to authenticate their blackness. Darker skinned men reported more indirect colorism and negative stereotypes as prominent challenges with colorism.

The diasporic resources and transnational flows of the Black diaspora have increasingly been of concern to scholars. However, the making of the Black diaspora in Canada has often been overlooked, and the use of sport to connect migrants to the homeland has been virtually ignored. This study uses African, Black and Caribbean diaspora lenses to examine the ways that first generation Caribbean-Canadians use cricket to maintain their association with people, places, spaces, and memories of home. In this multi-sited ethnography I examine a group I call the Mavericks Cricket and Social Club (MCSC), an assembly of first generation migrants from the Anglo-Caribbean. My objective to “follow the people” took me to parties, fundraising dances, banquets, and cricket games throughout the Greater Toronto Area on weekends from early May to late September in 2008 and 2009. I also traveled with approximately 30 MCSC members to observe and participate in tours and tournaments in Barbados, England, and St. Lucia and conducted 29 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with male players and male and female supporters. I found that the Caribbean diaspora is maintained through liming (hanging out) at cricket matches and social events. Speaking in their native Patois language, eating traditional Caribbean foods, and consuming alcohol are significant means of creating spaces in which Caribbean-Canadians can network with other members of the diaspora. Furthermore, diasporas are preserved through return visits, not only to their nations of origin, but to a more broadly defined homeland, found in other Caribbean countries, England, the United States and elsewhere in Canada. This study shows that while diasporas may form a unified communitas they also reinforce class, gender, nation and ethnicity hierarchies and exclusions in diasporic spaces. For example, women and Indo-Caribbeans are mainly absent from or marginalized at the cricket grounds, which celebrates a masculine, Afro-Caribbean culture. Corporeal practices such as sports, and their related social activities, can be deployed as diasporic resources that create a sense of deterritorialized community for first generation Caribbean migrants.

Few African American males do not have at least one memory of a barbershop. The barbershop is a space that finds a home in virtually every community in which you find Black males. To some degree, virtually all genres and periods of African American literary expression have situated the barbershop as a mediating space in the formulation of a Black masculine identity. The barbershop as mediating space allows Black males the opportunity to view themselves and also critique the ways in which they are gazed upon by the literary imagination. African American authors, through the use of the barbershop, bring to the center the construction of this space in Black masculinity identity formation. ¬ Although a common presence in African American literature, the barbershop has not received any serious, i.e. book length examinations in literary analysis. I argue that the historical portrayal of the barbershop as mediating space problematizes the intersections of ancestor, culture, history, memory and literary imagination to reveal the intricate relationship between Black males and the space. I seek to address the gap in coverage of the literary treatment of the African American barbershop as mediating structure in the formulation of a black masculine identity. My research will show that we cannot fully understand the literary formation of Black masculine identity unless we attend to the barbershop as a formative mediating space.