Joy James

Last updated
Joy James
Alma mater Fordham University (PhD) post doctorate M.A. from Union Theological Seminary (New York City)
OccupationUniversity professor
Employer Williams College
Known forPolitical philosophy, African American studies, feminist and critical race theory.

Joy James (born 1958) is an American political philosopher, academic, and author. [1] James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. Her books include Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Shadowboxing, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists, Resisting State Violence, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin where she developed the Harriet Tubman Digital Repository. [2]

Contents

Career

James worked closely with Angela Davis, who was on the faculty, during a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz. James edited The Angela Y. Davis Reader emphasizing Davis's liberation theory and democratic praxis. [3]

James has held positions as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1990–96); as associate professor in the department of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder (1997-2000), where she also served as the director at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (1998); as distinguished visiting scholar at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University (1999-2000), and as professor of Africana studies at Brown University (2000-2005).

James authored Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics through St. Martin's Press in 1991. The book synthesized theories of social movements with cultural and social politics as well as spotlighted images of black female agency and intellectualism in various political contexts. [4] In 1996, James released her second book, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture, via University of Minnesota Press. [5]

In 2005 she joined the faculty at Williams College. [6] Joy James has worked with Black feminist academics to form the Black Internationalists Unions as a form of abolitionism that fights anti-black regimes. [7]

In 2013, Seeking the Beloved Community: A Feminist Race Reader was released. The book was written over twenty years with essays that describe the tensions confronted by writers, scholars, activists, politicians, and political prisoners fighting racism and sexism. [8]

In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities published by Divided Publishing focuses on Love in various types of communities. The book includes a foreword by Da'Shaun L. Harrison and an afterword by Mumia Abu-Jamal. [9] [10] [11] [12]

In 2023, New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner was published by Common Notions. The book details a year spent addressing the legacy of Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner. Essays include frameworks for inspired abolitionist organizing and risk-taking. The book looks at "those of us broken enough to grow new bones" about the new traditions we inherit and renew in the struggle for freedom. James introduces the concept of a figure called the "captive maternal," from Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, to the incarcerated at Attica prison in 1971, to Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, the captive maternal is rarely celebrated in African-American history and United States history. [13]

Works

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References

  1. ↑ Joy James: Writing and Works, Williams College.
  2. ↑ Joy James, Williams College
  3. ↑ Visiting Woodson professors bring diverse perspectives. UVA Today, May 4, 2010.
  4. ↑ James, Joy (1999). Shadowboxing: representations of black feminist politics. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN   978-0-312-22070-9.
  5. ↑ James, Joy; Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne) (1996). Resisting state violence: radicalism, gender, and race in U.S. culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN   978-0-8166-2812-4.
  6. ↑ Joy A. James, Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies, Joins Williams Faculty., Sept. 14, 2005.
  7. ↑ Black Internationalists Unions, June 2020.
  8. ↑ Seeking the Beloved Community.
  9. ↑ "Not Your Guru". Lux Magazine. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  10. ↑ Wilcox, R. A. W. (2023-03-30). "At the impasse of Revolution and Revolutionary Love". Scalawag. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  11. ↑ Inquest (2023-03-28). "The Alchemy of Abolitionisms | Joy James". Inquest. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  12. ↑ Read, Hard to (2024-05-13). "Taking care with the weird, wild, and political literatures of Hard to Read". Document Journal. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  13. ↑ "New Bones Abolition". Common Notions Press. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
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