Carrie Mae Weems

Susan Cahan

Pamela R. Metzger

"The Louisiana Project," a new work by the noted artist Carrie Mae Weems, was commissioned as part of the bicentennial celebrations surrounding the commemoration of the Louisiana Purchase. Weems has a distinguished career as a photographer interested in history and social critique, and her work frequently addresses questions of race, class, and gender. "The Louisiana Project" incorporates still photography, narrative, and video projection as part of an examination of the complex history of New Orleans and the "commingling culture" that has resulted. Photographs use the symbolism of the mirror as a means of reflection on a particular region and its history, on attitudes about blackness, as well as sexual identity. In another group of images Weems places herself in a variety of locations--plantations, railroad tracks, and chemical plants--as a witness to the experience of African Americans. Final images consider a triad of relationships between white men, white women, and women of color portrayedas a shadow play. Susan Cahan places "The Louisiana Project" within the framework of Weems's career, exploring the artist's methods and objectives. Pamela Metzger gives insight into the legal paradoxes and obsessions in the construction of racial identity in Louisiana.

The Louisiana Project

Kitchen Table Series

Maurice Berger

This anthology takes us beyond the status of masculinity itself, questioning society's and the media's normative concepts of the masculine, and considering the extent to which men and women can transcend these stereotypes and prescriptions.

Constructing Masculinity

Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S. The essays in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity engage readers in critical conversations by activists, scholars, and artists reflecting on national and transnational legacies of African American activism as an element of artistic practice, particularly as they concern artistic expression and race relations, and the intersections of creative processes with economic, sociological, and psychological inequalities. Scholars from the fields of communication, theater, queer studies, media studies, performance studies, dance, visual arts, and fashion design, to name a few, collectively ask: What are the connections between African American arts, the work of social justice, and creative processes? If we conceive the arts as critical to the legacy of Black activism in the United States, how can we use that construct to inform our understanding of the complicated intersections of African American activism and aesthetics? How might we as scholars and creative thinkers further employ the arts to envision and shape a verdant society? Contributors: Carrie Mae Weems, Carmen Gillespie, Rikki Byrd, Amber Lauren Johnson, Doria E. Charlson, Florencia V. Cornet, Daniel McNeil, Lucy Caplan, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Sammantha McCalla, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Abby Dobson, J. Michael Kinsey, Shondrika Moss-Bouldin, Julie B. Johnson, Sharrell D. Luckett, Jasmine Eileen Coles, Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Rickerby Hinds. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Carrie Mae Weems

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