JAF Announces Fall 2021 Special Issue: “African American Expressive Culture, Protest, Imagination, and Dreams of Blackness”

The editors of the JAF just announced that “African American Expressive Culture, Protest, Imagination, and Dreams of Blackness,” the Fall 2021 special issue of JAF: A Global Quarterly (Journal of American Folklore, v. 134, no. 534) is now available online and will arrive in mailboxes soon. 

This special issue, edited by Tanya Boucicaut and Lisa Gilman, presents a collection of creative, reflective, and scholarly works written by artists, activists, and scholars. It was conceptualized in the Summer of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic and police brutality against Black people called for renewed reckoning with the foundational structure of white supremacy and broad inequities in the United States.

This unconventional issue centers Blackness and Black people intentionally  by transcending the traditional disciplinary boundaries of academia. It includes activists giving firsthand accounts; professors who engage their scholarship through artistry and activism; young students who stand in their truths as they discuss society from their perspectives; conversations with activists; art pieces and photography; and performers expressing themselves through their music, dance, and theater.