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Podcast: New Books in African American Studies
Episode: Jasmine Nichole Cobb, "New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair" (Duke UP, 2022)
Description: From Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis, ânatural hairâ has been associated with the Black freedom struggle. In New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke UP, 2022), Jasmine Nichole Cobb traces the history of Afro-textured coiffure, exploring it as a visual material through which to reimagine the sensual experience of Blackness. Through close readings of slave narratives, scrapbooks, travel illustrations, documentary films, and photography as well as collage, craft, and sculpture, from the nineteenth century to the present, Cobb shows how the racial distinctions ascribed to people of African descent become simultaneously visible and tactile. Whether examining Soul Trainâs...