Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belonging. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihanna’s ascendancy, among both Barbadians and the wider Caribbean community. The responses reveal as much about our own national and regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is subject to anxieties about her body language and latitude from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry.

This collection brings together US- and Caribbean-based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and economy. Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a theoretical frame, the authors intervene in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values and identity. The contributors approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, they collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.

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Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belonging. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihanna’s ascendancy, among both Barbadians and the wider Caribbean community. The responses reveal as much about our own national and regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is subject to anxieties about her body language and latitude from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry.

This collection brings together US- and Caribbean-based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and economy. Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a theoretical frame, the authors intervene in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values and identity. The contributors approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, they collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.

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Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture

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Overview

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belonging. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihanna’s ascendancy, among both Barbadians and the wider Caribbean community. The responses reveal as much about our own national and regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is subject to anxieties about her body language and latitude from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry.

This collection brings together US- and Caribbean-based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and economy. Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a theoretical frame, the authors intervene in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values and identity. The contributors approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, they collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9789766405243
Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
Publication date: 03/31/2015
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

HILARY McD. BECKLES is Professor of Economic and Social History and Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies. His many publications include Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide; A Nation Imagined: The First West Indies Test Tour, 1928; and Freedoms Won: Emancipation, Identity and Nationhood in the Caribbean.
HEATHER D. RUSSELL is Associate Professor of English, Florida International University. She is the author of Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic.

Table of Contents

Selected Discography and Awards

“Baadest-Bajan, Wickedest World-Gurl”
HILARY McD. BECKLES AND HEATHER D. RUSSELL
Westbury Writes Back: Rihanna Reclaimed
HILARY McD. BECKLES
Rihanna as Global Icon and Caribbean Threshold Figure
DON D. MARSHALL
International Identity: Rihanna and the Barbados Music Industry
MIKE ALLEYNE
“What’s My Name?” Reading Rihanna’s Autobiographical Acts
ESTHER L. JONES
She Dances on the Holodeck
CURWEN BEST
From “F Love” to “He Is the One”? Rihanna, Chris Brown and the Danger of Traumatic Bonding
DONNA AZA WEIR-SOLEY
Rihanna and Bajan Respectability
AARON KAMUGISHA
Rihanna: Diaspora Citizen, Bajan Daughter, Global Superstar
HEATHER D. RUSSELL
Contributors
Acknowledgements
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