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Fandom, Now in Color gathers together seemingly contradictory narratives that intersect at the (in)visibility of race/ism in fandom and fan studies. This collection engages the problem by undertaking the different tactics of decolonization—diversifying methodologies, destabilizing canons of “must-read” scholarship by engaging with multiple disciplines, making whiteness visible but not the default against which all other kinds of racialization must compete, and decentering white fans even in those fandoms where they are the assumed majority. These new narratives concern themselves with a broad swath of media, from cosplay and comics to tabletop roleplay and video games, and fandoms from Jane the Virgin to Japan’s K-pop scene. Fandom, Now in Color asserts that no one answer or approach can sufficiently come to grips with the shifting categories of race, racism, and racial identity.

Contributors: McKenna Boeckner, Angie Fazekas, Monica Flegel, Elizabeth Hornsby, Katherine Anderson Howell, Carina Lapointe, Miranda Ruth Larsen, Judith Leggatt, Jenni Lehtinen, joan miller, Swati Moitra, Samira Nadkarni, Indira Neill Hoch, Sam Pack, Rukmini Pande, Deepa Sivarajan, Al Valentín

A trenchant examination of the political dynamics of autobiography in education.

How do historically marginalized groups expose the partiality and presumptions of educational institutions through autobiographical acts? How are the stories we tell used to justify resistance to change or institutional complacency? These are the questions Wendy S. Hesford asks as she considers the uses of autobiography in educational settings. This book demonstrates how autobiographical acts-oral, written, performative, and visual-play out in vexed and contradictory ways and how in the academy they can become sites of cultural struggle over multicultural education, sexual harassment, institutional racism, hate speech, student activism, and commemorative practices.

Within the context of Oberlin, a small liberal arts college in Ohio, and beginning with a speak-out organized by Asian American students in 1995, this book looks at the uses of autobiographical practices in empowering groups traditionally marginalized in academic settings. Investigating the process of self-representation and the social, spatial, and discursive frames within which academic bodies and identities are constituted, Framing Identities explores the use of autobiographical acts in terms of power, influence, risks involved, and effectiveness. Hesford does not endorse autobiography as an unequivocal source of empowerment, however. Instead, she illustrates how autobiographical practices in the academy can mobilize competing and often irreconcilable interests. Hesford argues that by integrating self-reflection into cultural, rhetorical, and material analyses-and encouraging students to do the same-teachers not only will largely justify attention to the personal in the classroom, they will help their communities move beyond a naive identity politics. Framing Identities provides a model for teacher-researchers across the disciplines (education, English, composition, cultural studies, women’s studies, to name a few) to investigate the contradictory uses and consequences of autobiography at their own institutions, and to carve out new pedagogical spaces from which they and their students can emerge as social, political, and intellectual subjects.

Despite legislation designed to eliminate unfair racial practices, the United States continues to struggle with a race problem. Some thinkers label this a "new" racism and call for new political responses to it. Using the experiences of African American women and men as a touchstone for analysis, Patricia Hill Collins examines new forms of racism as well as political responses to it.In this incisive and stimulating book, renowned social theorist Patricia Hill Collins investigates how nationalism has operated and re-emerged in the wake of contemporary globalization and offers an interpretation of how black nationalism works today in the wake of changing black youth identity. Hers is the first study to analyze the interplay of racism, nationalism, and feminism in the context of twenty-first century black America.From Black Power to Hip Hop covers a wide range of topics including the significance of race and ethnicity to the American national identity; how ideas about motherhood affect population policies; African American use of black nationalism ideologies as anti-racist practice; and the relationship between black nationalism, feminism and women in the hip-hop generation.

In the post-Cold War era, the most common and often the most violent conflicts are ethnic conflicts. Many people, including many scholars, see ethnic conflicts as a return to the past, as contests between ancient and well-defined groups with long-standing grievances and animosities. Jack David Eller argues instead that these conflicts are a defining phenomenon of the "new world order"--that they are, in many ways, modern-day inventions based only loosely on "traditional" cultures and hostilities. From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict presents in-depth case studies on Sri Lanka, the Kurds, Rwanda and Burundi, Bosnia, and Quebec, along with two theoretical introductory chapters that offer the reader the tools to understand the relationship between "culture" or "tradition" and contemporary ethnic conflicts. Eller finds that ethnicity is not a simple instantiation of "traditional" culture, nor is conflict a simple consequence of ethnicity. Rather, each is constructed out of certain raw cultural materials, through a process of remembering, forgetting, interpreting, and inventing. Ultimately, Eller demonstrates, these groups are fighting not about culture, but with culture. No other book combines the level of analysis offered here with in-depth case studies of several important examples. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in understanding these conflicts. It will be assigned reading for students and scholars of cultural diversity and ethnic conflict in anthropology, history, political science, and peace and conflict studies. Jack David Eller is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Denver/Teikyo Loretto Heights University.

How does a relatively powerless ethnic group deal with the problems of economic inequality and racial discrimination? How do they gain power in the community? From Peones to Politicos examines these questions in detail, focusing on the changes in Mexicano-Anglo relations in one small South Texas community called North Town. These changes are typical of evolving Mexicano-Anglo relations in much of Texas and the Southwest.

The authors divide their study into three historical periods: the rancho era (1900–1930), the colonia era (1930–1970), and the contemporary period (1970–1977). They trace how Mexicano-Anglo relations have evolved away from the extremely exploitative, paternalistic sharecropper system of the rancho era, when open racism, strict social segregation, and effective Anglo political machines prevailed. They reveal, by contrast, how Mexicanos have become a power to be reckoned with by developing their own economic and political leaders and ethnic political organizations and challenging the Anglo control of the city, school, and county governments. The study also shows how Mexican American family practices have been changed by this transformation of the local political economy.

This revised edition of From Peones to Politicos presents updated fieldwork and additional discussion of class theory and the study of racial orders. Of special interest are reactions to the study by North Town residents themselves, which appear in the new Part IV.