A01=Huey Copeland
african
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Author_Huey Copeland
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feminism
forthcoming
gates
gay
gender
golden
hammonds
hendrick
hilton
homosexual
howell
interview
jafa
james
kerry
ligon
lorna
manhood
manifesto
masculinity
memoir
men
music
painting
parenting
pindell
race
racism
sculpture
sexuality
simpson
sun ra
theaster
thelma
wilderson
Product details
- ISBN 9780226581392
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 191 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 28 Aug 2026
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Writings on black men’s cultural production and black masculinity by one of today’s leading historians of modern and contemporary art.
Collecting twenty years of incisive essays, articles, and interviews—including four published here for the first time—by art historian Huey Copeland, this book affirms the extraordinary depth of black men’s cultural production and the diversity of artistic practices that explore visual black masculinity in the United States. Part history, part memoir, part critical manifesto, Touched by the Mother offers a multi-faceted look at American art and discourse of the past fifty years, a personal meditation on navigating the world as a black gay man, and a feminist perspective on the ways transatlantic slavery continues to mark African and African diasporic men. Focusing on how the black maternal shapes black masculinity, Copeland confronts the dynamics that position African-American men—after their mothers—as sites of violence, creativity, and contestation in the cultural imagination.
Richly illustrated throughout, Touched by the Mother considers an exciting range of assemblage, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video works by more than twenty renowned practitioners, along with interviews featuring Hilton Als, Thelma Golden, Frank B. Wilderson, III, and other influential figures in contemporary art, culture, and criticism. Works by artists including Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Howardena Pindell, Sun Ra, and Lorna Simpson represent modes of making and thinking that are uniquely “touched by the mother,” Copeland argues, moving us toward the promise of black feminist futures.
Collecting twenty years of incisive essays, articles, and interviews—including four published here for the first time—by art historian Huey Copeland, this book affirms the extraordinary depth of black men’s cultural production and the diversity of artistic practices that explore visual black masculinity in the United States. Part history, part memoir, part critical manifesto, Touched by the Mother offers a multi-faceted look at American art and discourse of the past fifty years, a personal meditation on navigating the world as a black gay man, and a feminist perspective on the ways transatlantic slavery continues to mark African and African diasporic men. Focusing on how the black maternal shapes black masculinity, Copeland confronts the dynamics that position African-American men—after their mothers—as sites of violence, creativity, and contestation in the cultural imagination.
Richly illustrated throughout, Touched by the Mother considers an exciting range of assemblage, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video works by more than twenty renowned practitioners, along with interviews featuring Hilton Als, Thelma Golden, Frank B. Wilderson, III, and other influential figures in contemporary art, culture, and criticism. Works by artists including Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Howardena Pindell, Sun Ra, and Lorna Simpson represent modes of making and thinking that are uniquely “touched by the mother,” Copeland argues, moving us toward the promise of black feminist futures.
Huey Copeland is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art and Black Study at the University of Pittsburgh. Copeland is an editor of the journal OCTOBER; coeditor of the award-winning essay collection Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World; and author of Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
