A01=Michael D. Harris
aesthetics
African Antecedents
African diaspora art
Africana folklore
Africana indentities
Alison Saar
Archibald Motley
August Wilson
Author_Michael D. Harris
Black Atlantic
Black Church
Black interior
Black midwifery
Black vernacular
blues aesthetic
body work
Category=AGA
Category=JBSL
conjure woman
Cuba
cultural identity
cultural syntax
culture
disidentification
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
expressive sounds
Henry Ossawa Tanner
hoo doo
Kara Walker
Kongo Cosmogram
Oprah Winfrey
pan-African culture
race
Renee Stout
ritual
Romare Bearden
sanctuary
shout
The Piano Lesson
Toni Morrison
visual traditions
West African art
Wilfredo Lam
work songs
Product details
- ISBN 9781478015062
- Weight: 572g
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Art as Sanctuary, Michael D. Harris considers literal and metaphorical uses of sanctuary in the Black experience and African diaspora art, including locales of spiritual expression, self-renewal, and cultural celebration. Harris offers an alternative framework to the Duboisian philosophy of double consciousness, pushing the boundaries of Africana aesthetic analysis by exploring the cultural signifiers embedded consciously or unconsciously in African diaspora art. Within these works, he reveals how these cultural cues speak to the vibrancy of African American life. While acknowledging the presence of the white observer’s gaze, Harris wishes to relieve the black interior from the panoptic assumptions of that gaze and its disciplines. Art as Sanctuary provides innovative pathways to understand African American visual culture and music as autobiographies of cultural identity and experience.
Michael D. Harris (1948–2022) was an artist, curator, and scholar and the author of Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation.
Dianne M. Stewart is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University.
Theophus H. Smith is Emeritus Associate Professor of Religion at Emory University.
Richard J. Powell is John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University and editor of Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, also published by Duke University Press.
Dianne M. Stewart is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University.
Theophus H. Smith is Emeritus Associate Professor of Religion at Emory University.
Richard J. Powell is John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University and editor of Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, also published by Duke University Press.
