Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 500

Wolf Warriors 2: Why a China-Africa Blockbuster is Blowing Up the Box Office

'Wolf Warriors 2 is the movie sensation of the summer in China, taking in over a record $630 million in box office receipts. The movie is so popular that is now the first non-Hollywood film to ever break in to the top 100 highest grossing releases. Set in a fictitious African country, Wolf Warriors 2 depicts a former Chinese special forces operative in an active war zone to rescue a group of Chinese compatriots and locals from a posse of blood-thirsty Western mercenaries. In this edition of the China Africa Podcast, Eric & Cobus discuss why Wolf Warriror 2 is so important both to understand Chinese popular opinion of Africa but also to gain an insight into a more muscular Chinese worldview.' -- The China Africa Project
 

Apollo Live Wire -- Black Men + Soul Music II: The Soul Revolution

'Following up the 2013 Live Wire inaugural event, this discussion looks at the music of Black men during the 1970s and 1980s, some of which drew attention to the persistent issues of the civil rights movement of previous decades. Black Men/Soul Music II: Soul Revolution will look at the work of artists such as Stevie Wonder, The Isley Brothers, The Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, and how they along with various writers and producers like Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Norman Whitfield helped to define the sound of a revolution in popular music. Award-winning writer and journalist Herb Boyd leads the discussion. Panelists included: Imhotep Gary Byrd, Gordon Chambers,  Mark Anthony Neal,  and Solomon Hicks.' --
Apollo Theater Education

Dolores Huerta on the Importance of Activism

“If we don’t engage, we have only ourselves to blame,” says Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, in this short interview from the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival. Huerta argues that if new protest movements want to change policy, old organizing methods are still the most effective.' -- The Atlantic

 

How Did the Confederate Flag Come North?

''The Confederate flag, once a symbol of the South, has increasingly come to represent disaffected White people across America.' -- WNYC News
         
        

Alicia Garza on Historical Amnesia, and Fighting White Supremacy

'As people respond in the wake of actions in Charlottesville,VA, perpetrated by white supremacists and Nazi's emboldened by President Trump, Making Contact interviews Alicia Garza, one of the founding leaders of Black Lives Matter. You'll hear Garza's specific definitions of power and white supremacy, as she contextualizes this moment, and you'll learn about concrete actions that people, especially white people can take to move forward and organize.' -- Making Contact

Mark Anthony Neal: "fair amount of White folk who are actually invested in the idea of White Supremacy"

Duke University Professor and Chair of the African + African American Studies Department Mark Anthony Neal joins Minnesota Public Radio News host Kerri Miller, as well as Michael Fauntroy (Howard University); Khalilah Brown-Dean (Quinnipiac University); Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post) and Andra Gillespie (Emory University) in a discussion of what the violence in Charlottesville reveals about America's struggle to reconcile the country's legacy of slavery.

The Legacy of Lynching--Confronting Racial Terror in America

'Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of Equal Justice Initiative, professor of law at New York University Law School and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), and Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, talk about the museum's current exhibit, The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America, which traces the history of racial injustice in America with a specific focus on how lynching was used as a tool of racial control, to reestablish white supremacy and suppress black civil rights after slavery was formerly abolished.' -- The Brian Lehrer Show

         
       

"Black Code Studies is Queer + Femme + Fugitive + Radical" -- The Black Scholar Presents 'Black Code'

Cover Art by John Ira Jennings The Black Scholar  is proud to announce the release of “Black Code,” by guest editors Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal. Johnson and Neal have assembled a collective of digital soothsayers working on the margins of Black Studies, Afrofuturism, radical media, and the digital humanities. Black Code Studies is queer, femme, fugitive, and radical; as praxis and methodology, it waxes insurgent when the need arises. And in this moment, we are in need of Black digital insurgency, one attuned to racial scripts of the past even as it looks to future modes of Black thought and cultural production for inspiration. Barely scratching the surface, this issue welcomes new work and celebrates a Black digital fugitivity that has been present since the beginning of the internet. Our contributors include Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lauren Cramer, Alessandra Raengo, Tara L. Conley, Ashleigh Wade, Aleia Brown, Joshua Crutchfield, Megan Driscoll, Ahmad Greene-Hayes, and Joy James, with an introduction from Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal, and ​with cover art from John Jennings celebrating Octavia Butler’s iconic novel, Wild Seed.For a limited time, download and read the introduction, “Wild Seed in the Machine,” and “Black Scholars Matter: #BlkTwitterstorians Building a Digital Community” by Aleia M. Brown & Joshua Crutchfield​,​ for free.To receive both print and digital versions of this issue, subscribe to Volume 47. When you subscribe to Volume 47, you will also receive “After Madiba: Black Studies in South Africa,” “Black Experimental Poetics,” and our final issue of 2017 which includes"​Notions of Blackness in the Context of HIV/AIDS Disparities and Research"​ by Chandra L. Ford​, ​"Lerone Bennett, Jr: A Life in Popular Black History​"​ by E. James West​, ​"Black on Black Love: Black Lesbian and Bisexual Women, Marriage, and Symbolic Meaning"​ by Siobhan Brooks​, and ​" August Wilson and American Theater: An Interview with Frank Rich"​ by Nathaniel G. Nesmith.​

Tracking American Hate, From the Nazis to the White Nationalists

'The Southern Poverty Law Center has been documenting hate groups in the U.S. for decades. From 2015 to 2016 they saw a rise in the number of those groups operating in the U.S. And while current totals are not the largest they’ve ever seen, the group has called them “high by historic standards.” Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks far right groups in the U.S., joins The Takeaway to break down the state of white supremacist groups in America.'

         
        

Talib Kweli In Havana Cuba

A short film -- Talib Kweli Inside Havana (Photography - William Baró; Direction & Post Production - Helmann Avelle)