John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Affrilachians: The FSA Photography of Ben Shahn & Marion Post Wolcott

I'm not an Affrilachian, but I'd award myself the title if I could. My credentials look pretty good. I've spent most of my adult life on the fringes of Appalachia, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Charlottesville, Virginia. I've got deep roots, on my mother's side, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, which is... Read more →

"Africa Let's Go Crazy": Coke's Other Africa

No one is crazier than Africans, because it's crazy to be kind. That's the premise behind Africa Let's Go Crazy, Coke's new advertising campaign across most of the continent. It's geared, Coke says, "towards inspiring and celebrating individuals who spread happiness on the continent by performing random acts of kindness... Read more →

Cristina de Middel and the Signifying Afronaut

...signifying is a "technique of indirect argument or persuasion," "a language of implication," "to imply, goad, beg, boast, by indirect verbal or gestural means." "...signifying... the language of trickery." --Henry Louis Gates quoting Roger D. Abrahams in "The 'Blackness of Blackness': A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey."... Read more →

Stranger with an Octobox: "Appalucci," LaNola Stone's Appalachia

Imagine Appalachia. If you're lucky, you're thinking about mountains -- high enough to reach for the stars, low enough to be forested from hollow to peak. You might know something about the hills' lush summer greens and the stark beauty of winter's bare trees and cottony snow. Or you might... Read more →

A Brief History of African Stereotypes, Part 1a: The White Man's Burden and Kony 2012

"The White Man's Burden" had nothing to do with Africa -- not in the beginning, at least. It was about colonialism, war, high ideals, and vulgar racism in southeast Asia. Rudyard Kipling addressed his best known poem to Americans. It first appeared in February 1899, less than a year after... Read more →

A Brief History of African Stereotypes, Part 1: Broken, Helpless Africa

Everything you know about Africa is wrong. No, no, not you in particular. I'm thinking about a more general "you" -- the American "you," the Western "you," and even the 18- to 22-year-old "you" who enrolls in my introductory African history classes. When I allow myself to think about it,... Read more →

"Stranger with a Camera": Death and Documentaries in Appalachia (and What It Has to Do with Africa)

"A camera is like a gun. It's threatening... it's invasive; it is exploitative, in terms of mass media. And it's not always true." --Colin Low, friend and colleague of Hugh O'Connor In 1967, Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor bled to death on a country road in eastern Kentucky. He was in... Read more →