1st Edition
The Renaissance Reader Beyoncé and Black Queer Popular Culture
Introduction
Nicholas R. Jones and Kinitra D. Brooks
PART I: Black Joy
1 Beyoncé’s Renaissance: A Queer Portal for Beylievers
adrienne maree brown
2 “I Love Myself When I Am Laughing”: Joy and Spatial Resistance in Beyoncé’s Renaissance
Patricia Coloma Peñate
3 Everybody on Mute: Beyoncé’s Ability to Silently Slay with Queer Call and Response
Amanda Marie Harrison
4 Welcome to the Renaissance: Defying Distortion, Division, and Difference
Kevin Allred
PART II: Queerness
5 The Irresistible Terrorism of Beyoncé: On the War Between Desire, Representation, and Black Queer Freedom
Hunter Shackelford
6 Uncle Johnny: Queer Worldmaking and the Black Family
Devon Betts
7 “They Looped. I Looped. The Samples to Feel Free”: Renaissance and Modern Ballroom as the Loophole of
Retreat in the Afterlife of Slavery
Robert A. Barry Jr
8 Transcending the Cis-tem: Interpolating Black Queer Temporality
Daniel Nabil Maroun
PART III: Sound and Technology
9 “Equestrian Monument, 2023”: Horses in Beyoncé’s Antihistoricist Renaissance World
Mackenzie Cooley
10 Black Feminist Sonic Rhetorics: Vocal Glitch and the Queering of Temporality in Beyoncé’s Renaissance
Alexis McGee
11 “Look Around, Everybody on Mute!”: Renaissance’s Potential Impact on Music Education
Elizabeth S. Palmer and Khyle B. Wooten
12 “Media All Up in Your Mind”: Accentuating Black Queer Vitality Through Cultivated Silence
Jermaine Anthony Richards
PART IV: Afrofuturism
13 The Renaissance Age of Pleasure: The Afro(feminist) futurism of Beyoncé and Janelle Monáe
Janell Hobson
14 Mothers of the Renaissance: The Beyoncification of Afrofuturism
Kinitra D. Brooks and Nicole Huff
15 Church Girls, Blues Women, and the Future of the Black Queer South
Berlisha Roketa Morton
16 Breaking to Build: Lessons for a Renaissance: A Reflection from a Black Queer Artist
Forest Brooks
Biography
Kinitra D. Brooks is the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies and the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University, USA.
Nicholas R. Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, USA, and the former King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center’s Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, USA.
"Until recently, writing on Beyoncé’s Renaissance felt akin to anatomizing a phantasmagoria. This collection of essays examines an album that reclaims house, disco and ballroom genres. Rooting their reflections in Black feminist thought, queer theory and Afrofuturism, contributors explore Beyoncé’s revival of neglected musical traditions, her homage to her beloved Uncle Johnny, who inspired the album, and her emergence as a “Mutha” figure for queer and trans communities. Through discussions of joy, spatial resistance and sonic innovation, the volume casts Beyoncé not simply as performer but as curator of Black queer heritage and legacy."
- Ellis Cashmore, Professor of Sociology and author of Celebrity Culture"A wonderful resource for readers and educators looking to connect history to Beyoncé’s expansive vision and onward to new queer, Black, and feminist futures. The contributors weave critical academic and personal insights together into a thrilling volume.”
- Leah DeVun, Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA
