Badia Ahad-Legardy – författare

As early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia's capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments.Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past.

As early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia's capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments.Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past.

Difficult Subjects: Insights and Strategies for Teaching about Race, Sexuality and Gender is a collection of essays from scholars across disciplines, institutions, and ranks that offers diverse and multi-faceted approaches to teaching about subjects that prove both challenging and often uncomfortable for both the professor and the student. It encourages college educators to engage in forms of practice that do not pretend that teachers and students are unaffected by world events and incidents that highlight social inequalities. Readers will find the collected essays useful for identifying new approaches to taking on the “difficult subjects” of race, gender, and sexuality. The book will also serve as inspiration for academics who believe that their area of study does not allow for such pedagogical inquiries to also teach in ways that address difficult subjects. Contributors to this volume span a range of disciplines from criminal justice to gender studies to organic chemistry, and demonstrate the productive possibilities that can emerge in college classrooms when faculty consider “identity” as constitutive of rather than divorced from their academic disciplines.Discussions of race, gender, and sexuality are always hot-button issues in the college classroom, whether they emerge in response to a national event or tragedy or constitute the content of the class over a semester-long term. Even seasoned professors who specialize in these areas find it difficult to talk about identity politics in a room full of students. And many professors for whom issues of racial, and sexual identity is not a primary concern find it even more challenging to raise these issues with students. Offering reflections and practical guidance, the book accounts for a range of challenges facing college educators, and encourages faculty to teach with courage and conviction, especially when it feels as though the world around us is crashing down upon our students and ourselves.