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A complex articulation of the ways blackness and nonnormative gender intersect—and a deeper understanding of how subjectivities are formed. A deep meditation on and expansion of the figure of the Negro and insurrectionary effects of the “X” as theorized by Nahum Chandler, The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender thinks through the problematizing effects of blackness as, too, a problematizing of gender. Through the paraontological, the between, and the figure of the “X” (with its explicit contemporary link to nonbinary and trans genders) Marquis Bey presents a meditation on black feminism and gender nonnormativity. Chandler’s text serves as both an argumentative tool for rendering the “radical alternative” in and as blackness as well as demonstrating the necessarily trans/gendered valences of that radical alternative. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Race --- African Americans --- Social aspects --- Philosophy. --- Intellectual life. --- Race identity. --- Chandler, Nahum Dimitri. --- Du Bois, W. E. B. --- Political and social views. --- Negritude --- African American intellectuals --- Physical anthropology --- Ethnic identity --- Gender identity --- Gender --- African American --- black feminism --- gender nonnormativity --- nonbinary --- transgender --- cis gender --- race identity --- Black

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This special collection assembles some of the most pre-eminent scholars in the field in African, African American, and American Studies to explore the ways writers reclaim the Black female body in African American literature using the theoretical, social, cultural, and religious frameworks of spirituality and religion. Central to these discussions is Black women’s agency within these realms—their uncanny ability to invent and reinvent themselves within individual and communal spaces that frame them as both outsider and insider, unworthy and worthy, deviant and sacred, excess and minimal. Scholars have sought to discuss these tensions, acknowledged and affirmed in prose, poetry, music, essays, speeches, written plays, or short stories. Forgiveness, healing, redemption, and reclamation provide entry into these vibrant explorations of self-discovery, passion, and self-creation that interrogate traditional views of what is spiritual and what is religious. Discussed writers include Toni Morrison, Phillis Wheatley, James Baldwin, Tina McElroy Ansa, Toni Cade Bambara, and Thomas Dorsey.

health --- healing --- ancestral mediation --- illness --- activism --- women’s rights --- spirituality --- Oshun --- eroticism --- God --- Oya --- ghost --- spirits --- honey --- storms --- caul --- the amen corner --- james baldwin --- black feminism --- sermon --- art --- literature --- music --- black preacher --- religion --- gospel music --- Thomas Dorsey --- Nettie Dorsey --- blues --- maternal death --- infant mortality --- hapticality --- Gnosticism --- womanist theology --- African American women --- Toni Morrison --- Song of Solomon --- Paradise --- The Source of Self-Regard --- Phillis Wheatley --- race --- Thomas Jefferson --- Christianity --- African American women writers --- 1970 --- extra-naturalism --- African American women’s spirituality --- nommo --- multimodal narrative --- self-actualization --- community --- asylum hill project --- naming --- pre-emancipation --- genealogy --- grounds of contention --- (in)visible --- revisionist interrogation --- spiritual translation --- uppity --- womanist --- n/a --- women's rights --- African American women's spirituality