On these pages you'll find more than 101 reasons why "Black is Beautiful." From the sultry stars of film and television to the sexy divas of fashion and music, this book pays tribute to those women who are changing the way America defines fashion and beauty. Full-color photographs from such top photographers as Steven Meisel, Gilles Bensimon, Paolo Roversi, and George Holz showcase unforgettable Black women at the forefront of style and beauty--woemn who have helped lift the self-esteem of sisters everywhere. "SoulStyle" features the newly annoitned and the continuously crowned royalty of fashion. Arranged in categories from Glamour Girls to Hip-Hop chic, Seventies Goddesses to Supermodels, these remarkable photos are accompanied by insightful biographies and commentary from leading arbiters of fashion and style. The book is distinct, sensual, and extraordinary. Each chapter is a candid and provocative look at the influences these women have had on popular culture.

From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of resistance. Whether using stiletto heels as weapons to protect against police attacks or incorporating African-themed designs into everyday wear, these fashion-forward women celebrated their identities and pushed for equality. In this thought-provoking book, Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London, and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their activism. Focusing on the emergence of the "soul style" movement—represented in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and more—Liberated Threads shows that black women's fashion choices became galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation. Drawing from an eclectic archive, Ford offers a new way of studying how black style and Soul Power moved beyond national boundaries, sparking a global fashion phenomenon. Following celebrities, models, college students, and everyday women as they moved through fashion boutiques, beauty salons, and record stores, Ford narrates the fascinating intertwining histories of Black Freedom and fashion.

Every nation in the Americas—from indigenous Peru to revolutionary Cuba—has been touched by the cultural and musical impact of rock. Rockin’ Las Américas is the first book to explore the production, dissemination, and consumption of rock music throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Brazil, the Andes, and the Southern Cone as well as among Latinos in the United States. The contributors include experts in music, history, literature, culture, sociology, and anthropology, as well as practicing rockeros and rockeras. The multidisciplinary, transnational, and comparative perspectives they bring to the topic serve to address a broad range of fundamental questions about rock in Latin and Latino America, including: Why did rock become such a controversial cultural force in the region? In what ways has rock served as a medium for expressing national identities? How are unique questions of race, class, and gender inscribed in Latin American rock? What makes Latin American rock Latin American? Rockin’ Las Américas is an essential book for anyone who hopes to understand the complexities of Latin American culture today.

Through the lives of Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Bob Zellner, Julian Bond, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and their contemporaries, The Shadows of Youth provides a carefully woven group biography of the activists who—under the banner of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—challenged the way Americans think about civil rights, politics, and moral obligation in an unjust democracy. A wealth of original sources and oral interviews allows the historian Andrew B. Lewis to recover the sweeping narrative of the civil rights movement, from its origins in the youth culture of the 1950s to the near present. The teenagers who spontaneously launched sit-ins across the South in the summer of 1960 became the SNCC activists and veterans without whom the civil rights movement could not have succeeded. The Shadows of Youth replaces a story centered on the achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. with one that unearths the cultural currents that turned a disparate group of young adults into, in Nash's term, skilled freedom fighters. Their dedication to radical democratic possibility was transformative. In the trajectory of their lives, from teenager to adult, is visible the entire arc of the most decisive era of the American civil rights movement, and The Shadows of Youth for the first time establishes the centrality of their achievement in the movement's accomplishments.

Focusing on the political movements of the 1950s and 1960s, this book argues that the arts can strengthen democracy by politically educating citizens.

The music of the United States is so cool! It reflects the country’s multicultural population through a diverse array of styles. Rock and roll, hip hop, country, rhythm and blues, and jazz are among the country’s most internationally renowned genres. Since the beginning of the 20th century, popular recorded music from the United States has become increasingly known across the world, to the point where some forms of American popular music is listened to almost everywhere. A history and an introduction in the ethnic music in the United States, American Indian music, classical music, folk music, hip hop, march music, popular music, patriotic music, as well as the American pop, rock, barbershop music, bluegrass music, blues, bounce music, Doo-wop, gospel, heavy metal, jazz, R&B, and the North American Western music.

This collection of original essays interrogates disciplinary boundaries in fashion, gathering fashion studies research across disciplines and from around the globe. Fashion and clothing are part of material and visual culture, cultural memory, and heritage; they contribute to shaping the way people see themselves, interact, and consume. For each of the volume’s eight parts, scholars from across the world and a variety of disciplines offer analytical tools for further research. Never neglecting the interconnectedness of disciplines and domains, these original contributions survey specific topics and critically discuss the leading views in their areas. They include discursive and reflective pieces, as well as discussions of original empirical work, and contributors include established leaders in the field, rising stars, and new voices, including practioner and industry voices. This is a comprehensive overview of the field, ideal not only for undergraduate and postgraduate fashion studies students, but also for researchers and students in communication studies, the humanities, gender and critical race studies, social sciences, and fashion design and business.