Overview

Manning the Race explores how African American men have been marketed, embodied, and imaged for the purposes of racial advancement during the early decades of the twentieth century. Marlon Ross provides an intellectual history of both famous and lesser-known men who have served—controversially—as models and foils for black masculine competence. Ross examines a host of early twentieth-century cultural sites where black masculinity struggles against Jim Crow: the mobilization of the New Negro; the sexual politics of autobiography in the post-emancipation generation; the emergence of black male sociology; sexual rivalry and networking in biracial uplift institutions; Negro Renaissance arts patronage; and the sexual construction of the black urban folk novel. Focusing on the overlooked dynamics of symbolic fraternity, intimate friendship, and erotic bonding within and across gender, Manning the Race is the first book to integrate same-sexuality into the cultural history of black manhood. By approaching black manhood as a culturally contested arena, this important new work reveals the changing meanings and enactments of race, gender, nation, and sexuality in modern America. Manning the Race opens new approaches to the study of black manhood in relation to U.S. culture. Where previous books tended to emphasize how individual black men's identities have been reactively informed by the U.S. regime of race and sexuality, Manning the Race makes the case for understanding how black men themselves have been primary agents and subjects in formulating the identity and practices of black manhood.

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9780814775639

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Reviews

<p> This major effort describes and analyzes how African American men were socialized and imaged for their public and private roles in the early 20th Century. Ross takes readers deeper into new dimensions of the Harlem Renaissance and African American urban life.

"""This major effort describes and analyzes how African American men were socialized and imaged for their public and private roles in the early 20th Century. Ross takes readers deeper into new dimensions of the Harlem Renaissance and African American urban life.""--CHOICE ""In this rich, eloquent, and indeed magisterial study, Marlon B. Ross explores how black manhood was constructed, produced, and reproduced under Jim Crow. At once cultural criticism and intellectual history, Manning the Race is a landmark contribution to the study of the deeply imbricated discourses of gender, sexuality, race, and nation."" -- Valerie Smith, Princeton University""An ambitious intellectual history of black manhood reform in the New Negro Movement, dating roughly from the 1890s to the 1940s.""-GC Advocate"

Author Information

Marlon Ross is Professor of English in the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry.

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