“Something Apart, Yet an Integral Part”: Duke Ellington's Harlem and the Nexus of Race and Nation
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Harlem loomed large in the imagination of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, one of the twentieth century's most significant composers and an important theorist of the condition of being black and American. This article provides insights into Ellington's social thought by foregrounding his evocations of Harlem and his efforts to interpolate that neighborhood into the physical, cultural, and imaginative spaces of US national life. In doing so, it also situates Ellington's ideas in relation to the competing intellectual currents of the Harlem Renaissance movement that had inspired his project of racial vindication. More broadly, the article argues that understanding of the history of African American ideas of race and nation benefits from analysis of discursive place-making and the spatial practices of artistic and intellectual work. Attending to space and place recuperates the complexity and multiplicity of such ideas, which are often concealed by abstracted discussion of concepts such as “integration.”
Source: Modern Intellectual History
Author: Daniel Matlin
Institution: King's College London
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
Funder: King's College London
OpenAlex ID: W3127088616