Mark Anthony Neal
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Mark Anthony Neal is an American author and academic. He is the Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and
African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
Studies at
Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
, where he won the 2010 Robert B. Cox Award for Teaching. Neal has written and lectured extensively on black popular culture, black masculinity, sexism and
homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, Gay men, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or ant ...
in Black communities, and the history of popular music. Neal is the founder and managing editor of the blog NewBlackMan. He hosts the weekly webcast ''Left of Black'' in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. A frequent commentator for
NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
, Neal contributes to several on-line media outlets, including Huff Post Black Voices and SeeingBlack.com. Mark Anthony Neal is a member of
Phi Beta Sigma Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1914. The fraternity's founders, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, wanted to ...
fraternity.


Publications


''What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture'' (1998)

In this work, Neal interprets the vast array of issues and overlapping instances that create black music and culture. This book argues that there are two separate worlds in which this type of blackness exists. The first is black music as it exists alone. Here it confines itself to black people and the "formal and informal institutions of the Black Public Sphere." It sings in juke joints and travels around the Chitlin' Circuit separate from the (white) outside world. The other side of black culture Neal speaks of is the one that outsteps the Black Public Sphere and stretches into the mainstream. In the book he labels this as a "tumultuous marriage between black cultural production and mass consumerism-one in which black agency is largely subsumed by market interests." From this standpoint, Neal fleshes out the issues and ramifications of such a problematic "marriage."


''Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic'' (2002)

Using the term post-soul to "describe the political, social, and cultural experiences of the African-American community since the end of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement", Neal's ''Soul Babies'' explores the extent to which post-modernity can be applied to the African-American experience. Characterizing the black traditions of the civil rights era as modern, Neal argues that postmodern or post-soul expressions of blackness both borrow from black modern traditions and render these traditions dated and obsolete in the process of articulating their own identity. By illustrating both attributes that play into the new forms of blackness, Neal is capable of painting blackness to be more than one thing or another. Neal is able to play on familiar tropes that embody post soul blackness. Much of this articulation is based on what Neal calls "a sense of familiarity," or the exploitation of familiar tropes of blackness in post-soul expressions that are meant to heighten the sense of fracture and difference of the contemporary narratives built around them.
OutKast Outkast (sometimes written as OutKast) was an American hip-hop duo formed in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1992, consisting of Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and André 3000 (André Benjamin, formerly known as Dré). Widely regarded as one of the greatest an ...
's song "
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, in defiance of Jim Crow laws, which sparke ...
" exemplifies the aesthetic as the duo "bastardized" black history and culture, to create an alternative meaning. Neal also describes the contrast between the post-soul aesthetic and conventional black culture. Using
Tupac Shakur Tupac Amaru Shakur (; born Lesane Parish Crooks; June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor, regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all tim ...
and R. Kelly as examples of post-soul figures, Neal highlights the crass materialism as well as the complex black identities these artists represent as starkly different from older, more conventional black motifs. Furthermore, Neal explains the often confrontational nature by which post-soul figures are received by the more established and antiquated black community like the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
. Also central to the predominance of the post-soul aesthetic is its commodification of black culture into Rap albums and films.


''Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation'' (2003)

This book Neal's analysis of R&B as it functions in all facets of black life. In it he argues that Rhythm and Blues is more than a haphazard collection of love songs. Here he exhibits the genre as a type of catalogue for black life that expresses all of the joys, sacrifices, struggles, and contradictions involved in the history of black people. He discusses everything from
Marvin Gaye Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. (; April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American Rhythm and blues, R&B and soul singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He helped shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player an ...
, to
Macy Gray Natalie Renée McIntyre (born September 6, 1967), known professionally as Macy Gray, is an American contemporary R&B, R&B and soul music, soul singer and actress. She is known for her distinctive raspy voice and a singing style heavily influence ...
to
Black Entertainment Television Black Entertainment Television (BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting Black American audiences. It is the flagship channel of the BET Media Group, a subsidiary of Paramount Global's CBS Entertainment Group. Originally launched ...
; the later of which he charges with the promotion of hyper-sexualized, skewed views of black music. "Neal creates a dense, sensuous space for a critical cultured black perspective, what ''Soul Babies'' called the post-soul aesthetic in black America. He illustrates his thesis through the use of black vernacular forms to produce a voice that is both streetwise and scholarly ...Neal may be the first writer capable of developing groundbreaking ideas in the academy and getting a new sticker on his ghetto pass in one stroke."—''The Washington Post''


''New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity'' (2005)

Neal identifies as a
Feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
. His 2005 memoir ''New Black Man'' includes a letter to his feminist mentor, Masani Alexis DeVeaux. In the book he uses the term "NewBlackMan" to describe men who define their black manhood in gender-progressive terms. His thesis focuses on how the Strong Black Male narrative might be the most problematic issue facing the contemporary black man while the work itself chronicles his journey to becoming a black feminist male.


''Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities'' (2013)

Here Neal analyzes the many ways in which black masculinity is constructed, reconstructed, read and misread in contemporary American culture. His thesis argues that black boy and men are bound by their legibility; their ability to be clearly stereotyped and placed into preset categories. This type of profiling divvies up black masculinity into something non-threatening enough for White America to accept and be at peace with. The illegible areas thus become unsettling. That which does not fit into say the thug or criminal category is incomprehensible and thus don't belong to black masculinity. Through looking at black male figures such as
Jay Z Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, businessman, and record executive. Rooted in East Coast hip-hop, he was named the greatest rapper of all time by ''Billboard'' and '' Vibe'' i ...
,
Luther Vandross Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. (April 20, 1951 – July 1, 2005) was an American Soul music, soul and Contemporary R&B, R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. Over his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA certification, RIAA-certified ...
and R. Kelly, Neal explores how varied representations of the black man are able to break the public antagonism against black male bodies. Neal is also the co-editor (with Murray Forman) of ''That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader 2nd edition'' (2011)


See also

* Childish Gambino; ''This is America''


References


External links


NewBlackMan (in Exile)Department of African & African American Studies
at Duke University * Henry Jenkins

February 28, 2014. * ttp://leftofblack.tumblr.com/ Left of Blackwebcast
Neal on Huff Post Black Voices
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neal, Mark Anthony American feminists Duke University faculty University at Buffalo alumni Living people American male writers 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics Year of birth missing (living people) African-American male writers American male feminists