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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
(born 1950) Born Steveland Morris and blind since birth, Stevie Wonder became one of the biggest artists on the Motown label until he terminated this contract in 1971. By the mid-1970s he was the bestselling American singer/songwriter, with successes like Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973) and Songs in the Key of Life (1976). Mastering many instruments at an early age, he led the way in embracing the new electronic synthesizers and recording techniques, and often played all the instruments on his records. His songs have combined different musical traditions—gospel, blues, reggae and rap—with strong social commitment, as in the songs “Living for the City” (1973), about a migrant new to New York City caught up in a drug deal, and “Happy Birthday” (1980), advocating the nationwide adoption of the Martin Luther King holiday.
Industry:Culture
(born 1950) Widely considered, since publication of The Signifying Monkey (1988), the dean of letters among African American intellectuals, reinforced by his regular contributions to journals like The New Yorker. Also noted for his impact on black studies with the establishment, first at Duke and then at Harvard, of strong liberally inclined African American studies departments, carving out a middle ground between the more Afrocentric programs of Molefi Kete Asante and Leonard Jeffries, and the Marxist orientations of intellectuals like Manning Marable and Robin D.G. Kelley. Gates has also promoted the study of gender in edited work on black women writers (for example Reading Black, Reading Feminist, 1990). His memoir, Colored People, was published in 1994.
Industry:Culture
(born 1951) Conservative political commentator. A nationally syndicated television and radio talk-show host, Limbaugh’s gruff tirades against taxes, big government and feminism won him an enthusiastic public following in the 1990s. Scandals surrounding President Clinton, particularly those related to Clinton’s alleged sexual indiscretions, were favorite targets for Limbaugh’s barbs. Limbaugh’s emergence as a national personality was part of an explosion in the influence of media that resulted in the blurring of distinctions between politics and entertainment.
Industry:Culture
(born 1952) “Black feminist” intellectual, noted for such works as Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Talking Back (1981) and Outlaw Culture (1994), in which she synthesizes race, class and gender to examine African American culture, which she locates in a society shaped by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” In her writings she outlines the limits of feminist solidarity divided along the lines of race and class, as well as the corresponding limits of racial and class solidarity. Born Gloria Watkins, she writes under the name of her great-grandmother; the use of lower-case letters in her name deflects attention from her identity onto her ideas.
Industry:Culture
(born 1952) First African American poet laureate of the United States, as well as the youngest, in 1993–5. Her published works include Yellow House and Corner (1980) and Mother Love (1995); Thomas and Beulah (1986), which explores the stories of her grandparents, won the Pulitzer Prize. She has also published a novel, Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Much of her work seeks to deal with ordinary life; she is also interested in communicating poetry to children.
Industry:Culture
(born 1952) Guitarist/lead singer of the pioneering band Talking Heads, which formed in 1975.
Often miscategorized as punk, Talking Heads, clean-cut and preppy-looking, created a quirky experimental sound that became indicative of New York rock. Their first hit, “Psycho-killer,” contained lyrics in French about glory and words in English about a man upset by his lack of manners. In the 1980s, the band became increasingly involved in African American and world music, and, by the mid-decade, guest musicians joined them on records. Byrne has worked with theater artists Twyla Tharp and Robert Wilson, directed the “mockumentary” True Stories (1986) and shared an Oscar for the score for The Last Emperor (1987). Leaving the band in the late 1980s, he has collaborated with Latin American musicians and hosts a music show on PBS.
Industry:Culture
(born 1952) Independent African American director-producer, Dash has faced many problems in funding that have limited her output. Nonetheless, her lyrical vision, synthesizing poetry and music, underpins master works like Four Women (1978), while Illusions (1982) explores a black woman passing for white in 1940s Hollywood. Daughters of the Dust (1992), a stunning prelude to the African American great migration, set on the Gullah coast, was the first feature-length general release film by an African American woman.
However, even after its critical success, Dash could not finance another feature; she has worked on musical shorts and a project on Zora Neale Hurston.
Industry:Culture
(born 1953) African American feminist scholar first noted for Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, her 1979 study of the effects of sexism and racism on African American women. Much criticized within the black community the work dissected the racial stereotypes associated with black masculinity and femininity that trap black women in roles that simultaneously require them to be assertive and successful, and blame them for being emasculating. In Invisibility Blues (1990), Wallace continues her work on the intersection of race and gender in African American visual and popular culture.
Industry:Culture
(born 1953) Considered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who brought him to Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies program in 1994, the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our time. Author of the bestselling Race Matters (1993), and collaborator with bell hooks, West has blended religious homilies with loose-fitting Marxist analysis. His criticism of the black middle class for being “decadent” resembles that of E. Franklin Frazier, and his discussion of the “psychic pain” inflicted upon the urban poor fits with current views that the “underclass” is dysfunctional. He has criticized hip-hop culture for being nihilistic, in contrast to intellectuals like Robin D.G. Kelley and some of the practitioners themselves, who have emphasized its deep politicization.
Industry:Culture
(born 1954) Born of a Chippewa Indian mother and German American father, Erdrich grew up in North Dakota and earned a degree in anthropology from Dartmouth in 1976. Her first book, Love Medicine (1984), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Subsequent novels have further developed the characters from her first book, drawing on both sides of her heritage to explore the interaction of Native Americans and their European American neighbors. Her use of multiple narrators and recurring characters has been likened to Faulkner. Most of her work has been a collaboration with her late husband, Michael Dorris, who committed suicide in 1995.
Industry:Culture
