Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture

by Shayne Lee

Overview

Why is there no 'pro-sex' contingency in black feminist scholarship? Why do so few African-American scholars expound on issues celebrating female sexual pleasure? Perhaps the answers to these questions reside within a discursive matrix of sexual repression commonly referred to as the politics of respectability, and its rein on black sexual politics. In Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture, sociologist Shayne Lee steers black sexual politics toward a more sex-positive trajectory. Introducing feminist analysis to a conceptual mZnage &hat; trois of scripting theory, media representation, and black sexual politics, Lee considers the ways in which the feminist quest for social and sexual equality can delve into popular culture to see the production of subversive scripts for female sexuality and erotic agency. Whereas most feminist scholarship underscores how sexual representations of black women in media are exploitative and problematic, Lee portrays black female celebrities like Janet Jackson, BeyoncZ, Karrine Steffans, Zane, Tyra Banks, Juanita Bynum, Sheryl Underwood and many more as feminists of sorts who afford women access to cultural tools to renegotiate sexual identity and celebrate sexual agency and empowerment. Erotic Revolutionaries navigates the uncharted spaces where social constructionism, third-wave feminism, and black popular culture collide to locate a new site for sexuality studies that is theoretically innovative, politically subversive, and stylistically chic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761852292
Publisher:	Hamilton Books
Publication date:	08/04/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	243 KB

About the Author

Shayne Lee received a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University and is now associate professor of sociology and African Diaspora studies at Tulane University. Lee is also the author of T.D. Jakes: America's New Preacher and co-author of Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace, both published by New York University Press.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Introduction
Chapter 3 1. Flipping the Sexual Script: The Social Construction of Sexuality
Chapter 4 2. Sultry Divas of Pop and Soul: Janet, Beyoncé, and Jill
Chapter 5 3. Confessions of a Video Vixen
Chapter 6 4. Zane's Urban Erotica
Chapter 7 5. Serena and the Power Chicks
Chapter 8 6. Vagina Power: Alexyss Tylor and the Sexperts
Chapter 9 7. Black Clergywomen and Sexual Discourse
Chapter 10 8. Erotic Queens of Comedy
Chapter 11 9. Tyra Banks: Erotic Talk Show Host
Chapter 12 Epilogue: Surfing the Third Wave
Chapter 13 References
Chapter 14 About the Author

Editorial Reviews

This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as “nuggets of empowerment.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as “nuggets of empowerment.

Signs: Journal of Women In Culture & Society

This book is a notable contribution to the field.

Elevate Difference

This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as “nuggets of empowerment.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

This book is a notable contribution to the field.--Elevate Difference

This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as "nuggets of empowerment."--Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

From the Publisher

This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as “nuggets of empowerment.

Signs: Journal Of Women In Culture & Society