Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

In 1974, Ellwood Parry published The Image of the Indian and the Black Man in American Art, 1590-1900 (CH, Oct'74), the art analogue to Winthrop Jordan's 1968 White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (CH, Apr'68). The multivolume The Image of the Black in Western Art (1976-89) followed, thanks to collectors Dominique de Menil and Jean de Menil, who conceived of the project in the 1960s. (This set was reissued by Harvard in 2010-14, with five additional volumes.) Such "images of" studies attempted to bring some critical understanding of racism and its effects into the present. A matter of perspective, the studies unintentionally privileged and centered whiteness, helping in constructing notions of "the West." The present volume represents a shift in perspective and as such is mandatory reading. It brings into focus long-standing traditions and interest, on the part of Africans and Asians, in representing the black body. The volume covers Islamic art as well as the art of India, China, Japan, and the countries of Africa. Including ten essays by experts in their respective fields, this rich resource allows one to think differently in the wake of postcolonial and "decolonial" theories.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.