Music
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Fallen Angels & Failures to Love: Gendered Violence in Songs About Bad Girls
By Annita Lucchesi Every year a few songs like this come out (semi-recent examples include Lil Wayne’s “How to Love,” J.Cole’s “Daddy’s Little Girl,” and...
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Op-Ed: Not Okay, Uncle Rush
By Darrian Wesley Thomas Dear Uncle Rush, Pull up a chair. We need to handle some family business. So, I saw the “Harriet Tubman Sex...
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LGBTQ Film Feature: “U People” Fifth Anniversary Interview with Hanifah Walidah
Nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary in 2010, U People is a music video, a documentary LGBT film, and a...
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“r/evolutionary love sounds: a mixtape for Assata”
By Amina Doherty rev·o·lu·tion noun ˌre-və-ˈlü-shən 1. a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system; 2. the movement...
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Confessions of an Anglo Mariachi Musician
When my partner’s father, Saul, first played for me a recording of ranchera singer Miguel Aceves Mejía, I instantly fell in love with his voice....
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Confessions of a Black Morrissey Fan
By Joshua Alston This week, Morrissey announced that he is canceling the remainder of his North American tour, due to an ongoing battle with a bleeding...
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Bebop, Jazz Manhood and “Piano Shame”
By Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. In sixth or seventh grade, a time of life when most guys my age were trying on their swagger, I was...
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On Beyoncé, Benedict, and the Volition of Women
By Lisa O’Neill At a school mass at my all girls’ Catholic High School, the priest said a homily about chastity, and in particular, sex...
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In Mourning
By Isaiah M. Wooden This…for Hadiya Pendleton. I used...
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Black Survival in the Uchromatic Dark
By Tavia Nyong’o With all the rock dinosaurs that thundered the Madison Square Garden dome during Wednesday’s 12-12-12 benefit concert, a viewer might have missed...
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Phantasmagoria; or, The World is a Haunted Plantation
By Selamawit D. Terrefe This year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival debuted a “holographic” performance by the late Tupac Amaru Shakur. Rather than...
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Introducing TFW Intern Maura Jennison-Obenshain
TFW is delighted to introduce our current intern, Maura Jennison-Obenshain, who will be working for us throughout the fall semester. Maura is a graduate student...
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Russia Jails Female Punk Rock Band
When the women of the Russian music group Pussy Riot played what they called a punk prayer, “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out!” inside Moscow’s Christ...
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Spinning on Blackness: Wading through the Contradictions of Frank’s Ocean
By Nicholas Brady Those African persons in “Middle Passage” were literally suspended in the “oceanic”… these captive persons, without names that their captors would recognize,...
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“Coming Out” To Cash?: Frank Ocean and Social Progression
By David J. Malebranche Last week, social media was set ablaze when Frank Ocean publicly released a letter describing a love experience he had during...
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On Race, Trauma, and "Strange Fruit"
Recently, I taught Billie Holiday’s signature song, “Strange Fruit,” in my Critical Trauma Studies course in a harrowing session on lynching. My graduate students had...
