Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
1,474
result(s) for
"Paul Robeson"
Sort by:
Paul Robeson : the artist as revolutionary
\"A world-famous singer and actor, a trained lawyer, an early star of American professional football and a polyglot who spoke over a dozen languages. These could be the crowning achievements of a life well-lived, yet for Paul Robeson the higher calling of social justice led him to abandon the theater and Hollywood to become one of the most important political activists of his generation. Gerald Horne's biography uses Robeson's remarkable and revolutionary life to tell the story of the 20th century's great political struggles: against racism, against colonialism, and for international socialism\"--Back cover.
Book
Arise Africa, Roar China
This book explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies during World War II and the Cold War-journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo, and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen. Charting a new path in the study of Sino-American relations, Gao Yunxiang foregrounds African Americans, combining the study of Black internationalism and the experiences of Chinese Americans with a transpacific narrative and an understanding of the global remaking of China's modern popular culture and politics. Gao reveals earlier and more widespread interactions between Chinese and African American leftists than accounts of the familiar alliance between the Black radicals and the Maoist Chinese would have us believe. The book's multilingual approach draws from massive yet rarely used archival streams in China and in Chinatowns and elsewhere in the United States. These materials allow Gao to retell the well-known stories of Du Bois, Robeson, and Hughes alongside the sagas of Liu and Chen in a work that will transform and redefine Afro-Asia studies.
eBook
Grandpa stops a war : a Paul Robeson story
\"Based on the true story of Paul Robeson's visit to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, comes this recollection of his bravery and activism by his granddaughter, Susan Robeson, with her debut book\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex
Actor and singer Paul Robeson's performances inOthello,Show Boat, andThe Emperor Jonesmade him famous, but his midcentury appearances in support of causes ranging from labor and civil rights to antilynching and American warmongering made him notorious. When Robeson announced at the 1949 Paris Peace Conference that it was \"unthinkable\" for blacks to go to war against the Soviet Union, the mainstream American press declared him insane.Notions of Communism, blackness, and insanity were interchangeably deployed during the Cold War to discount activism such as Robeson's, just a part of an array of social and cultural practices that author Tony Perucci calls the Cold War performance complex. Focusing on two key Robeson performances---the concerts in Peekskill, New York, in 1949 and his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956---Perucci demonstrates how these performances and the government's response to them are central to understanding the history of Cold War culture in the United States. His book provides a transformative new perspective on how the struggle over the politics of performance in the 1950s was also a domestic struggle over freedom and equality. The book closely examines both of these performance events as well as artifacts from Cold War culture---including congressional documents, FBI files, foreign policy papers, the popular literature on mental illness, and government propaganda films---to study the operation of power and activism in American Cold War culture.
eBook
Interpreting Celebrity Biography
How should we regard the characters and accomplishments of celebrities? We examine this question by drawing upon virtue ethics in political philosophy as a set of analytical tools and a framework for thinking about life writing about celebrities. We apply our virtue ethics framework, informed especially by Aristotle’s views about human excellence and honor and Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of narrative unity and self-reflection, to the life stories of the well-known humanist, activist, and performer Paul Robeson and the celebrity president Donald Trump. Our analysis helps account for both the nature of discontent with celebrity culture and why we admire a subclass of celebrities who display particular attributes. It also demonstrates life writing’s relevance to and inseparability from central concepts in virtue ethics.
Journal Article
Placing Paul Robeson in History: Understanding His Philosophical Framework
Paul Robeson is one ofthegreatestyetmostunknown figures of the 20th century. This article goes beyond the traditional bibliographic style of documenting this great life, toward constructing a usable philosophical framework from it. Utilizing Robeson's own works, and building on the small critical literature already in existence, I present his philosophical framework - comprised of anticolonialism, socialism, and human rights. I present these dense, interconnected, and ever-expansive philosophical stances into a form of communication that can be easily understood, evaluated, taught, and compared. Understanding the philosophies, actions, and examples of his ideological framework will provide the appropriate contextual background for understanding (to play off the title of Robeson's 1958 book, Here I Stand) where Paul Robeson philosophically stood.
Journal Article
Compromise, Commemoration and Containment of Public Memory: The Revival of Paul Robeson's Legacy at Rutgers University, 1966–1975
Paul Robeson was the most famous alumnus in the history of Rutgers College, but by the 1960s, four decades after his graduation, his name had been effectively erased from the school's public memory, a victim of Cold War nationalism. Despite efforts by student activists in the 1960s to restore his legacy, and official recognitions that followed, Robeson's reputation remained obscure. Taking a new look into the Rutgers Archives through the lens of public memory theory, this article argues that for Robeson, and for controversial figures more generally, commemorations reached through concession and compromise can serve to contain public memories more than proclaim them.
Journal Article
Paul Robeson
A world-famous singer and actor, a trained lawyer, an early star of American professional football and a polyglot who spoke over a dozen languages. These could be the crowning achievements of a life well-lived, yet for Paul Robeson the higher calling of social justice led him to abandon both the NFL and Hollywood and become one of the most important political activists of his generation - battling both Jim Crow and Joseph McCarthy.
Gerald Horne's biography uses Robeson's remarkable and revolutionary life to tell the story of the 20th century's great political struggles: against racism, against colonialism, and for international socialism. This critical and searching account provides an opportunity for readers to comprehend the triumphs and tragedies of the revolutionary progressive movement of which Robeson was not just a part, but, perhaps, its most resonant symbol.
eBook
The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello
Lindsey R. Swindall examines the historical and political context of acclaimed African American actor Paul Robeson's three portrayals of Shakespeare's Othello in the United Kingdom and the United States. These performances took place in London in 1930, on Broadway in 1943, and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959. All three of the productions, when considered together, provide an intriguing glimpse into Robeson's artistry as well as his political activism.The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello maintains that Robeson's development into a politically minded artist explicates the broader issue of the role of the African American artist in times of crisis. Robeson (1898-1976) fervently believed that political engagement was an inherent component of the role of the artist in society, and his performances demonstrate this conviction.In the 1930 production, audiences and critics alike confronted the question: Should a black actor play Othello in an otherwise all-white cast? In the 1943 production on Broadway, Robeson consciously used the role as a form for questioning theater segregation both onstage and in the seats. In 1959, after he had become well known for his leftist views and sympathies with Communism, his performance in a major Stratford-upon-Avon production called into question whether audiences could accept onstage an African American who held radical-and increasingly unpopular-political views. Swindall thoughtfully uses Robeson's Othello performances as a collective lens to analyze the actor and activist's political and intellectual development.
eBook
