Passing Interest: Racial Passing in US Novels, Memoirs, Television, and Film, 1990-2010 (SUNY series in Multiethnic Literature) - Softcover

Nerad, Julie Cary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438452284 ISBN 13: 9781438452289

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2015

Synopsis

Explores how the trope of racial passing continues to serve as a touchstone for gauging public beliefs and anxieties about race in this multiracial era.

The first volume to focus on the trope of racial passing in novels, memoirs, television, and films published or produced between 1990 and 2010, Passing Interest takes the scholarly conversation on passing into the twenty-first century. With contributors working in the fields of African American studies, American studies, cultural studies, film studies, literature, and media studies, this book offers a rich, interdisciplinary survey of critical approaches to a broad range of contemporary passing texts. Contributors frame recent passing texts with a wide array of cultural discourses, including immigration law, the Post-Soul Aesthetic, contemporary political satire, affirmative action, the paradoxes of “colorblindness,” and the rhetoric of “post-racialism.” Many explore whether “one drop” of blood still governs our sense of racial identity, or to what extent contemporary American culture allows for the racially indeterminate individual. Some essays open the scholarly conversation to focus on “ethnic” passers—individuals who complicate the traditional black-white binary—while others explore the slippage between traditional racial passing and related forms of racial performance, including blackface minstrelsy and racial masquerade.

“…this volume will prove useful to those in a broad spectrum of fields, including film, literature, and cultural studies … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

About this title

About the Author

Julie Cary Nerad is Associate Professor of American Literature at Morgan State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438452284
• ISBN 13: 9781438452289
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360
• Editor: Nerad Julie Cary