Alessandra Raengo
Professor- Education
Ph.D in Cinema Studies, NYU, 2006
- Biography
Dr. Raengo is a theorist of black aesthetics and visual culture, working at the intersection of Black Studies, Visual Culture Studies, Film Studies, Art History, and Aesthetic Theory. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value (Dartmouth, 2013) and Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled (Bloomsbury, 2016) and numerous articles and book chapters on Black cinema, the Black visual arts, and Critical Race Theory. Dr. Raengo is the Founding Editor in Chief of the liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, recently acquired by Duke University Press, a journal entirely devoted to the intersection between Black Studies and aesthetic theory she initially founded with her graduate students here at GSU. The Duke UP journal is an outgrowth of the liquid blackness group she founded in 2013 in the Moving Images Studies doctoral program, which is devoted to the study of the radical aesthetic possibilities of the visual and sonic arts of the Black diaspora. Under her leadership “liquid blackness” developed into a multi-pronged project: a theoretical concept, a methodology, a pedagogy, an archival project, a digital humanities initiative archived at the Library of Congress, a curatorial practice, and a praxis of community-building. Most recently, Dr. Raengo has been one of the driving forces behind AMPLIFY, a showcase for film students’ work that seeks to foster artistic and critical dialog around systemic anti-blackness.
- Publications
Books
Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled. (In the series “Film theory in Practice,” Todd McGowan, ed.) New York: Bloomsbury, October 2016, 203pp.
On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2013, 232pp.
with Robert Stam, eds.: Literature and Film. A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Blackwell Publishing, 2005, 359pp
with Robert Stam, eds.: A Companion to Literature and Film. Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 463pp
with Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi, eds.: I limiti della rappresentazione. The Bounds of Representation. Udine: Forum, 2000, 472pp
with Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi, eds.: La nascita dei generi cinematografici. The Birth of Film Genres. Udine: Forum, 1999, 456pp
Journal Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters
Book review: Kobena Mercer, Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since the 1980s (Duke University Press, 2016), forthcoming in caa.org (August 2017)
with Lauren M. Cramer, “Freeing Black Codes: liquid blackness Plays the Jazz Ensemble,” in “Black Code Studies,” ed. Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal, special issue, The Black Scholar 47 (forthcoming, Fall 2017)
“Dreams are colder than Death and the Gathering of Black Sociality,” Black Camera, 8, no. 2 (2016)
“Black Matters,” special section of Discourse on “Is the Moving Image an Object?” ed. Brian Price and Alessandra Raengo, vol. 38, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 246-264.
“Blackness and the Image of Motility: A Suspenseful Critique,” Black Camera, 8, no. 1 (2016): 191-206.
“Life in Those Shadows! Kara Walker’s Post-Cinematic Silhouettes,” in Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film, ed. Julia Leyda and Shane Denson (REFRAME Books, April 2016). Reprint.
“Encountering the Rebellion: liquid blackness reflects on the expansive possibilities of the L.A. Rebellion films,” in L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema, ed. Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, Jacqueline Stewart, University of California Press, 2015. (Winner of the 2016 Kraszna Krausz Book Award, UK and of the SCMS Best Edited Collection)
“liquid blackness: A Research Project on Blackness and Aesthetics,” in Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, exhibition catalogue ed. by Connie Butler and published by DelMonico- Prestel, 2015. Reprint.
“©AMOUFLAGE”, in On Not Looking: The Paradox of Contemporary Visual Culture, ed. Francis Guerin, Routledge, 2015.
“Out of the Literary Comfort Zone: Adaptation, Embodiment, Assimilation,” in Teaching Adaptations, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, Palgrave, 2014: 106-119.
“In the Shadow,” Camera Obscura 83, vol. 28, no. 2 (2013).
“Reification, Reanimation, and the Money of the Real,” The World Picture Journal 7, “Distance,” Summer 2012. http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_7/Raengo.html.
“Shadowboxing: Lee Daniels’s Non-Representational Cinema,” in Mia Mask, ed., Contemporary Black American Cinema, Routledge, 2012: 200-216.
“Optic Black: Blackness as Phantasmagoria,” in Akil Houston ed., Beyond Blackface. Africana Images in the US Media. Kendall Hunt Publishing, 3rd edition, 2010: 151-162.
“A Necessary Signifier: The Body as Author and Text in The Jackie Robinson Story.” Adaptation. A Journal of Literature on Screen Studies 1 (2) 2008: 79-105.
Conference Proceedings (International and Multilingual)
“Life in Those Shadows! Kara Walker’s Post-cinematic Silhouettes.” In Jane Gaines, Francesco Casetti, Valentina Re, eds. The Very Beginning/ At the Very End. Udine: Forum, 2010: 211-220.
“Other Cinemas: The Photographic Gaze of the Long Twentieth Century.” In Enrico Biasin, Roy Menarini, Federico Zecca, eds. The Ages of Cinema. Criteria and Models for the Construction of Historical Periods. Udine: Forum, March 2008: 335-343.
“Race and Indexicality: Images of the Civil Rights Struggle in Night of the Living Dead.” In Veronica Innocenti and Valentina Re, eds. Limina/le soglie del film. Film’s Thresholds. Udine: Forum, 2004: 541-556.
liquid blackness: publications, research projects and events
Publications
“Introduction,” liquid blackness 3, no. 6 (December 2016): “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness.”
http://liquidblackness.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/LB6-INTRO.pdf
“Passing Through Film/Passing Through Jazz,” liquid blackness 2, no. 5 (September 2015): “Passing through Film: The Arts and Politics of the Jazz Ensemble”
http://liquidblackness.com/issues/LB5fullspread.pdf
“Introduction,” liquid blackness 1, no. 4 (November 2014): “fluid radicalisms”
http://liquidblackness.com/publications/fluid-radicalisms/
“Introduction” and “Thinking Through Space,” liquid blackness 1, no. 3 (June 2014): “2014 liquid blackness Symposium: Reflections and Movements”
http://liquidblackness.com/issues/LB3.pdf
“Blackness, Aesthetics, Liquidity,” liquid blackness 1, no. 2 (April 2014): “blackness, aesthetics, liquidity”
http://liquidblackness.com/LB2.pdf
“The L.A. Rebellion Comes to Town,” liquid blackness 1, no. 1 (February 2014): “liquid blackness meets the L.A. Rebellion”
http://liquidblackness.com/LB1_LARebellion.pdf
Posts
“Suspension, Revisited,” In Media Res: A Media Commons Project, October 13, 2016
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2016/10/14/suspension-revisited
“A Withdrawing Object,” In Media Res: A Media Commons Project, September 17, 2015
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2015/09/18/withdrawing-object
Events:
Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness, public conversation and release of 6th liquid blackness publication, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA Dec. 1, 2016
Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph. Screening, Symposium and Art Show
Georgia State University and Gallery 72, Atlanta, GA Oct. 6-7, 2016
Arthur Jafa in Conversation: Strategies for a Black Aesthetics Kopleff Recital Hall, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA April 4, 2016
Can Blackness be Loved? Screening of Arthur Jafa’s Dreams are Colder than Death (2013) and Q&A with the filmmaker. Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta GA April 2, 2016
Symposium on the Arts and Politics of the Jazz Ensemble screening of Passing Through (Larry Clark, 1977), Symposium, Georgia State University, and Drawing Through art show at Mammal Gallery, Atlanta GA September 18-19, 2015
Black Audio Film Collective Film and Speaker Series: Georgia State University, National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center September 26-28 and October 3-4, 2014
liquid blackness Symposium: “Blackness, Aesthetics, Liquidity,” Georgia State University and Mammal Gallery, Atlanta, GA April 11-12, 2014
L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema film series Plaza Theater and Emory University, Atlanta, GA October 25-27, November 2-4, November 15-17, November 22-24, 2013