Black Queer Studies

E. Patrick Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, also published by Duke University Press

A groundbreaking collection of sixteen essays that examines the productive intersection of the fields of black and queer studies

Acknowledgments viiForeword: "Home" Is a Four-Letter Word / Sharon P. Holland ixIntroduction: Queering Black Studies/ "Quaring" Queer Studies / E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson 1I. DISCIPLINARY TENSIONS: BLACK STUDIES/QUEER STUDIESPunks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? / Cathy J. Cohen 21Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity / Roderick A. Ferguson 52Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies / Dwight A. McBride 68Outside in Black Studies: Reading from a Queer Place in the Diaspora / Rinaldo Walcott 90The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Evidence, Everyday Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge / Phillip Brian Harper 106"Quare" Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother / E. Patrick Johnson 124II. REPRESENTING THE "RACE": BLACKNESS, QUEERS, AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITYBeyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm / Marlon B. Ross 161Privilege / Devon W. Carbado 190"Joining the Lesbians": Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility / Kara Keeling 213Why Are Gay Ghettoes White? / Charles I. Nero 228III. HOW TO TEACH THE UNSPEAKABLE: RACE, QUEER STUDIES, AND PEDAGOGYEmbracing the Teachable Moment: The Black Gay Body in the Classroom as Embodied Text / Bryant Keith Alexander 249Are We Family? Pedagogy and the Race for Queerness / Keith Clark 266On Being a Witness: Passion, Pedagogy, and the Legacy of James Baldwin / Maurice O. Wallace 276IV. BLACK QUEER FICTION: WHO IS "READING" US?But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction / Jewelle Gomez 289James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room: Expatriation, "Racial Drag," and Homosexual Panic / Mae G. Henderson 298Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: "Que(e)rying History" / Faedra Chatard Carpenter 323Bibliography 349Contributors 371Index 375