Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 14

ABC11 | Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal Writes Love Letter to Black Fatherhood

'Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is an African and African American Studies professor at Duke University. He's a dad of two, with a grandchild on the way. His foundation to fatherhood started with his father. "I don't think there was ever that occasion in my life, where my dad and I said to each other, I love you," reflected Neal.'

The Takeaway | Rewriting What "Healthy" Means for Black Women

'In the new book “It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting The Story of Black Women’s Bodies,” author Jessica Wilson explores the ways in which health is a social construct, how the bodies of Black women have never “fit” the definition of bodies that are “good” or “healthy” in a society where there is “pressure to conform to white supremacist ideals of health and beauty,” and how that is harmful to Black women.'

Soundcheck | Oddisee, True to Deep-Thinking Form, Questions Drive and Ambition

'The Sudanese-American rapper Oddisee – born Amir Elkhalifa – has been making socially conscious hip hop since 2008, and in live performance he’s known for playing not with a DJ or recorded samples but with a live band, called Good Company. Oddisee has just released the 2023 album called To What End, tackling big ideas of home, race, family, and human ambition. Oddisee, and the high-caliber musicians of the band Good Company, play these tunes in-studio.'

New Photography Exhibition Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop

'In honor of Hip-hop's 50th anniversary, a new Fotografiska exhibition showcases some of the most pivotal moments and faces of the movement. The show includes early-1970s South Bronx street photos, Nicki Minaj at a Brooklyn diner in 2008, De La Soul in front of The Apollo (1993), Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean on a Harlem rooftop working on the Fugees’ debut album (1993) and more. Curators Sally Berman and Sacha Jenkins join us to talk about the exhibition, Hip Hop: Conscious, Unconscious.'

Celebrating Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

'Patricia Cruz, artistic director and CEO of Harlem Stage, Carl Hancock Rux, poet, playwright, recording artist, essayist and radio journalist, talk about Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at 70: A Harlem Celebration - a collaboration of arts organizations across Harlem encompassing live performances, video, a walking tour, and more, and the impact of the novel across the decades.'

PBS North Carolina | Panel Discussion: Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World

'PBS NC's Deborah Holt Noel leads a conversation about the history of hip hop: how it became a world-wide phenomenon and the social justice issues highlighted by the artists and their lyrics. Our panelists: Dr. Mark Anthony Neal and Dr. Nikki Lane, professors at Duke University; Ernest Hooker, podcast host and instructor at NC A&T University; and N-Tyce (Amma Allen), a hip hop artist from Greensboro.'

New Books Network: Dianne M. Stewart – Black Women, Black Love America's War on African-American Marriage

'According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage (Seal Press, 2020) reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis. Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.

Host Mickell Carter is a doctoral student in the department of history at Auburn University.'

Helga | Visual artist Carrie Mae Weems on Grace and Inclusion

"Within seriousness, there's little room for play, but within play there's tremendous room for seriousness. It's through the act of serious play that wonderful ideas are born." -- Carrie Mae Weems

'Carrie Mae Weems is one of today’s most influential and generous contemporary American artists, as devoted to her own craft as she is to introducing other artists into the world. Her photography and diverse visual media has won her numerous awards including the Rome Prize, a MacArthur genius grant, and four honorary doctorates, and she was even named one of the 100 most influential women of all time by Ebony magazine. In this episode, Weems explores the struggles artists must maintain to find balance and reach an audience, how the field cannot advance without the deep and profound inclusion of Black artists, and what the concept of “grace” means to her and her mother.'

Left of Black S13 · E14 | "Requiem for the Enslaved" with Composer Carlos Simon and Rapper Marco Pavé

272 enslaved people were sold by Georgetown University in 1838 to bring in much-needed funds to preserve itself. Recently, the university has strove to make amends for this tremendous act of inhumanity. But composer Carlos Simon, Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown, felt that something should be done to commemorate the enslaved through an artistic lens. Thus began a collaboration with Georgetown’s first hip-hop artist-in-residence, Memphis-based Marco Pavé, to create the Simon's album, Requiem for the Enslaved, released by Decca Music. The album was nominated for “Best Contemporary Classical Composition" at the 2023 Grammy Awards. Host and Duke University Professor, Mark Anthony Neal  spent some time with the musicians in this special episode of Left of Black, produced by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University.

The Takeaway: For Jasmine Guillory, Love Lives in the Details

'According to the Romance Writers of America’s definition, a book must have a love story as the central plot and have a happily-ever-after ending to fit into the romance genre. And that guaranteed happy ending can provide readers with a space for radical joy. In romance novels, characters have the space to be flawed and complex, with the promise of acceptance in the end. For New York Times bestselling romance novelist Jasmine Guillory, that guarantee of happiness means that her heroines get to showcase vulnerability, love and radical acceptance in ways that are seldom available to Black women across popular culture. Guillory sat down with The Takeaway to talk all about the power of a good love story, and what it can do for writers and readers alike.'