Imperial blues : geographies of race and sex in Jazz Age New York / Fiona I. B. Ngô.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ngô, Fiona I. B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arts and society--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century.

Arts and society.

Immigrants--New York (State)--New York--Intellectual life--20th century.

Immigrants.

Minorities--New York (State)--New York--Intellectual life--20th century.

Minorities.

Imperialism.

Intellectual life.

History.

New York (State)--New York.

Physical Description:

x, 267 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2014.

Summary:

In this pathbreaking study, Fiona I. B. Ngô examines how geographies of U.S. empire were perceived and enacted during the 1920s and 1930s. Focusing on New York during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Ngô traces the city's multiple circuits of jazz music and culture. In considering this cosmopolitan milieu, where immigrants from the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, and China crossed paths with blacks and white "slummers" in dancehalls and speakeasies, she investigates imperialism's profound impact on racial, gendered, and sexual formations. As nightclubs overflowed with the sights and sounds of distant continents, tropical islands, and exotic bodies, tropes of empire provided both artistic possibilities and policing rationales. These renderings naturalized empire and justified expansion, while establishing transnational modes of social control within and outside the imperial city. Ultimately, Ngô argues chat domestic structures of race and sex during the 1920s and 1930s cannot be understood apart from the imperial ambitions of the United States. Book jacket.

Contents:

Desire and danger in jazz's contact zones

Queer modernities

Orienting subjectivities

Dreaming of Araby

Academic indiscretions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-250), filmography (page 250), and index.

ISBN:

9780822355243

0822355248

9780822355397

0822355396

OCLC:

853287141