reSources for research on race and aesthetics

Bibliography

Below you can find a briefly annotated bibliography of works at the intersection of race and aesthetics. The works have been very roughly categorized based on their intellectual traditions. This page is, and will continue to be, a work in progress. If you have any suggestion for additions and revisions, please email [email protected].

Philosophical Aesthetics

Critical Race Theory
  • Cade Bambara, Toni (1970). The Black Woman, an Anthology. New York: New American Library-Signet. [A collection of essays, poetry, and short fiction from Blacke female intellectuals.] 
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. (1926). "Criteria of Negro Art." Du Bois: Writings. Ed. Nathan Huggins. New York: Library of America, 1986. 993-1002. ["All art is propaganda, and ever must be."]
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). "The Souls of Black Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903)."  New York: Bantam Classic, 1989. [A seminal work of Black counter-modernity.]
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. Writings. New York: Bantam Classic, 1989. [A collection of the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, as seminal works of Black counter-modernity.]
  • Ellis, Trey (1989). "The New Black Aesthetic." Callaloo 38: 233-243 [An article on the development of Black aestehtics away from a "narrow nationalism" at the end of the 1980s.] 
  • Fine, Elsa Honig (1971). “Mainstream, Blackstream and the Black Art Movement.” Art Journal 30.4: 374–375. [On the need to create a distinctive Black aesthetic to create a culturally autonomous voice.] 
  • Gayle, Addison (1971a), ed. The Black Aesthetic. New York: Anchor-Doubleday. [A collection of critical essays.] 
  • Gayle, Addison (1971b). “Cultural Strangulation: Black Literature and the White Aesthetic.” In The Black Aesthetic. Ed. Addison Gayle. New York: Anchor-Doubleday. 38–45. [A foundational text of Black aesthetics, calling for the development of a new aesthetic determined by Black, not white, tastes.] 
  • Hall, Stuart (1990). "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Edited by Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence & Wishart: 222-237. [On representation and cultural identity within new Black British cinema, and how that may articulate both new identities and new aspects of identities.]
  • Hall, Stuart (1992). "What is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture." In Black Popular Culture. Edited by Gina Dent. Seattle, WA: Bay Press. 21-36. [Understanding Black identity in light of how popular culture presents a simplified and unitary Black experience, and the political significance is of popular culture presenting such a unitary identity.] 
  • Locke, Alain (1925). The New Negro. New York: Touchstone-Simon and Schuster, 1997. [An Anthology of works on using art to create a Pan-African identity.]  
  • Lorde, Audre (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. [A collection of essays and poetry on various subjects.] 
  • Posnock, Ross (1998). Color and Culture: Black Writers in the Making of the Modern Intellectual. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [A historical investigation of Black American intellectuals which situates them in American cultural and literary tradition.]

Works from Other Philosophical Areas

Works from Cognate Fields

Local Organizations

British Society of Aesthetics
Centre for Aesthetics, University of Leeds
Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies, University of Leeds

White Rose Critical Race and Ethnicity Network
Dismantling the Master's House