Rachel Jane Carroll is the ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"In a world where the category of race too easily conjures up the ugliest aspects of socialinequality, xenophobia, and racial violence, Rachel Carroll's exquisite new book reminds us thatracial difference can also be a site of extraordinary beauty, imagination, and communion.Through a meticulous and generous reading of twentieth-century experimental culturalforms, For Pleasure recovers a tradition of Black and Asian American artists refiguring race asan open invitation to ceaselessly play with and recombine the various facets of phenotypicaldifference. The artists Carroll assembles ultimately aim to wholly disorganize our sense of whatcounts as beautiful, opening up the field of pleasure to continual revision." - Ramzi Fawaz, author of Queer Forms "Thrilling and inventive at every turn. Carroll seeks to recover aesthetic and erotic pleasure inliterary, visual, and performative art, and she does so in unexpected ways and places. In arguingthat aesthetic pleasure and innovation can undo the unfreedom of racism in which we findourselves, this well-argued and stylistically sophisticated book reveals experimental art to be anundeniable vehicle of social theory." - GerShun Avilez, University of Maryland

Rachel Jane Carroll is the ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"In a world where the category of race too easily conjures up the ugliest aspects of socialinequality, xenophobia, and racial violence, Rachel Carroll's exquisite new book reminds us thatracial difference can also be a site of extraordinary beauty, imagination, and communion.Through a meticulous and generous reading of twentieth-century experimental culturalforms, For Pleasure recovers a tradition of Black and Asian American artists refiguring race asan open invitation to ceaselessly play with and recombine the various facets of phenotypicaldifference. The artists Carroll assembles ultimately aim to wholly disorganize our sense of whatcounts as beautiful, opening up the field of pleasure to continual revision." - Ramzi Fawaz, author of Queer Forms "Thrilling and inventive at every turn. Carroll seeks to recover aesthetic and erotic pleasure inliterary, visual, and performative art, and she does so in unexpected ways and places. In arguingthat aesthetic pleasure and innovation can undo the unfreedom of racism in which we findourselves, this well-argued and stylistically sophisticated book reveals experimental art to be anundeniable vehicle of social theory." - GerShun Avilez, University of Maryland

Rachel Jane Carroll is the ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"In a world where the category of race too easily conjures up the ugliest aspects of socialinequality, xenophobia, and racial violence, Rachel Carroll's exquisite new book reminds us thatracial difference can also be a site of extraordinary beauty, imagination, and communion.Through a meticulous and generous reading of twentieth-century experimental culturalforms, For Pleasure recovers a tradition of Black and Asian American artists refiguring race asan open invitation to ceaselessly play with and recombine the various facets of phenotypicaldifference. The artists Carroll assembles ultimately aim to wholly disorganize our sense of whatcounts as beautiful, opening up the field of pleasure to continual revision." - Ramzi Fawaz, author of Queer Forms "Thrilling and inventive at every turn. Carroll seeks to recover aesthetic and erotic pleasure inliterary, visual, and performative art, and she does so in unexpected ways and places. In arguingthat aesthetic pleasure and innovation can undo the unfreedom of racism in which we findourselves, this well-argued and stylistically sophisticated book reveals experimental art to be anundeniable vehicle of social theory." - GerShun Avilez, University of Maryland