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8 books match the query 'Hidden Histories'
Disney's Most Notorious Film
Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the SouthBy Jason Sperb
University of Texas Press, 2012
The Walt Disney Company offers a vast universe of movies, television shows, theme parks, and merchandise, all carefully crafted to present an image of wholesome family entertainment. Yet Disney also produced one of the most infamous Hollywood films, Song of the South. Using cartoon characters and live actors to retell the stories of Joel Chandler Harris, SotS portrays a kindly black Uncle Remus who tells tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the “Tar Baby” to adoring white children. Audiences and critics alike found its depiction of African Americans condescending and outdated when the film opened in 1946, but it grew in popularity—and controversy—with subsequent releases. Although Disney has withheld the film from American audiences since the late 1980s, SotS has an enthusiastic fan following, and pieces of the film—such as the Oscar-winning “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”—remain throughout Disney’s media universe.
Disney’s Most Notorious Film examines the racial and convergence histories of Song of the South to offer new insights into how audiences and Disney have negotiated the film’s controversies over the last seven decades. Jason Sperb skillfully traces the film’s reception history, showing how audience perceptions of SotS have reflected debates over race in the larger society. He also explores why and how Disney, while embargoing the film as a whole, has repurposed and repackaged elements of SotS so extensively that they linger throughout American culture, serving as everything from cultural metaphors to consumer products.
Footsteps in the Dark
The Hidden Histories of Popular MusicGeorge Lipsitz
University of Minnesota Press, 2007
Most pop songs are short-lived. They appear suddenly and, if they catch on, seem to be everywhere at once before disappearing again into obscurity. Yet some songs resonate more deeply—often in ways that reflect broader historical and cultural changes.
In Footsteps in the Dark, George Lipsitz illuminates these secret meanings, offering imaginative interpretations of a wide range of popular music genres from jazz to salsa to rock. Sweeping changes that only remotely register in official narratives, Lipsitz argues, can appear in vivid relief within popular music, especially when these changes occur outside mainstream white culture. Using a wealth of revealing examples, he discusses such topics as the emergence of an African American techno music subculture in Detroit as a contradictory case of digital capitalism and the prominence of banda, merengue, and salsa music in the 1990s as an expression of changing Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican nationalisms. Approaching race and popular music from another direction, he analyzes the Ken Burns PBS series Jazz as a largely uncritical celebration of American nationalism that obscures the civil rights era’s challenge to racial inequality, and he takes on the infamous campaigns to censor hip-hop and the radical black voice in the early 1990s.
Teeming with astute observations and brilliant insights about race and racism, deindustrialization, and urban renewal and their connections to music, Footsteps in the Dark puts forth an alternate history of post–cold war America and shows why in an era given to easy answers and clichéd versions of history, pop songs matter more than ever.
George Lipsitz is professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Life in the Struggle, Dangerous Crossroads, and American Studies in a Moment of Danger (Minnesota, 2001).
Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America
Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds.
Duke University Press, 2000
Along these lines, the book begins with two theoretical chapters by the editors, Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux. Dore opens by arguing against the prevailing view that the nineteenth century was marked by a gradual emancipation of women, while Molyneux considers how various Latin American state forms—liberal, corporatist, socialist, neoliberal—have more recently sought to incorporate women into their projects of social reform and modernization. These essays are followed by twelve case studies that examine how states have contributed to the normalization of male and female roles and relations. Covering an impressive breadth not only of historical time but also of geographical scope, this volume moves from Brazil to Costa Rica, from Mexico to Chile, traversing many countries in between. Contributors explore such topics as civic ritual in Bolivia, rape in war-torn Colombia, and the legal construction of patriarchy in Argentina. They examine the public regulation of domestic life, feminist lobby groups, class compromise, female slaves, and women in rural households—distinct, salient aspects of the state-gender relationship in specific countries at specific historical junctures.
By providing a richly descriptive and theoretically grounded account of the interaction between state and gender politics in Latin America, this volume contributes to an important conversation between feminists interested in the state and political scientists interested in gender. It will be valuable to such disciplines as history, sociology, international comparative studies, and Latin American studies.
Contributors. María Eugenia Chaves, Elizabeth Dore, Rebecca Earle, Jo Fisher, Laura Gotkowitz, Donna J. Guy, Fiona Macaulay, Maxine Molyneux, Eugenia Rodriguez, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Ann Varley, Mary Kay Vaughan
Hidden Histories of Unauthorized Migrations from Europe to the United States
Edited by Danielle Battisti and S. Deborah Kang
University of Illinois Press, 2025
Often depicted as the nation’s iconic legal immigrant, unauthorized European migrants are often overlooked by scholars, policymakers, and the media. This volume tells the stories of European migrants who adopted irregular migration strategies to enter and remain in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Contributors explore facets of this history with essays on migration patterns from Russia, Italy, Ireland, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland. They also offer important arguments about the treatment of unauthorized European migrants by states and societies on both sides of the Atlantic and how the reception of undocumented immigrants has been and continues to be impacted by the dynamics of racial, class, and gender constructions in the United States and abroad. As the contributors show, the reception accorded unauthorized European migrants frequently obscured and even normalized their irregular migration strategies, easing their access to American citizenship.
Revealing and insightful, Hidden Histories of Unauthorized Migrations from Europe to the United States sheds new light our intertwined notions of race, legality, and immigration.
Contributors: Danielle Battisti, Ashley Johnson Bavery, Mary Patrice Erdmans, Polina Ermoshkina, Torsten Feys, Carly Goodman, S. Deborah Kang, E. Kyle Romero, Randa Tawil, and Joanna Wojdon
Hidden Histories
Faith and Black Lesbian LeadershipMonique Moultrie
Duke University Press, 2023
Hidden Histories
Palestine and the Eastern MediterraneanBasem L. Ra'ad
Pluto Press, 2010
For thousands of years, the region of Palestine and the East Mediterranean has been denied an indigenous voice for an inclusive history. Three religions ascribe their origins to this part of the world, appropriating and re-appropriating the "Holy Land" time and again.
Hidden Histories offers a powerful corrective to common understandings. It emphasizes Palestine's long history and dispels many old and new myths – covering issues of religious origins and sacred sites, identity and self-colonization, and the retrieval of ancient heritage.
Mob Culture
Hidden Histories of the American Gangster FilmGrieveson, Lee
Rutgers University Press, 2005
Sinister, swaggering, yet often sympathetic, the figure of the gangster has stolen and murdered its way into the hearts of American cinema audiences. Despite the enduring popularity of the gangster film, however, traditional criticism has focused almost entirely on a few canonical movies such as Little Caesar, Public Enemy, and The Godfather trilogy, resulting in a limited and distorted understanding of this diverse and changing genre.
Mob Culture offers a long-awaited, fresh look at the American gangster film, exposing its hidden histories from the Black Hand gangs of the early twentieth century to The Sopranos. Departing from traditional approaches that have typically focused on the "nature" of the gangster, the editors have collected essays that engage the larger question of how the meaning of criminality has changed over time. Grouped into three thematic sections, the essays examine gangster films through the lens of social, gender, and racial/ethnic issues.
Destined to become a classroom favorite, Mob Culture is an indispensable reference for future work in the genre.
The Secrets We Keep
Hidden Histories of the Byzantine EmpireRoland Betancourt
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2024
Secrecy has played a role throughout human history and continues to capture the popular imagination. Some of the most seductive aspects of the Byzantine Empire—such as the relics of the imperial palace and the military uses of Greek fire—have been shrouded in mystery for centuries. This book provides a brief history of secrecy in Byzantium and examines the role of the art historian in uncovering the truth, demonstrating how visual evidence can not only reveal new findings but also purposely conceal answers.
Art historians face many challenges in their search for hidden knowledge, including accessing accounts preserved in fragmentary glimpses and reconciling how practices of speculation and reconstruction result in different, and sometimes contradictory, understandings. With pressing urgency, this book asks scholars to consider their role in articulating the stories of marginalized people, particularly for queer and trans history.
At the core of these investigations is the quest to discover how clandestine knowledge was transmitted and how relationships were strengthened by collective secret keeping, as well as how concealment is used as a strategy for exercising power. With insights into the religious, imperial, military, and cultural uses of secrecy, this book offers an intriguing look at the ways secrecy manifested itself during the Byzantine Empire and the implications it has for the issues we face today.