Hope Draped in Black

"In this thought-provoking, demanding, and courage-inspiring book, Joseph R. Winters urges his readers to embrace narratives of progress that force them to confront loss. In so doing, he opens us up to more realistic and more human possibilities for identity and community. Winters's ethical passion is lovely to behold." - Dana D. Nelson, author of Commons Democracy: Reading the Politics of Participation in the Early United States

"Joseph R. Winters argues that the tragicomic dimension of African American life manifests as a kind of 'melancholic hope.' He traces this uncanny desire to hear the anguished cries of the ancestors, to revisit the site of historical trauma, across multiple domains: from the foundational scholarship of Du Bois to politics in the age of Obama. Drawing on the spiritual/blues/jazz impulse in black culture and Walter Benjamin, Winters reveals the capaciousness and paradoxical productivity of hope draped in melancholy." - William David Hart, author of Afro-Eccentricity: Beyond the Standard Narrative of Black Religion

"Tracing lines developed by critical theory, Winters finds and lays claim to the resplendent life that traumatized and forgotten communities make for themselves on the underside of history." - Christian Century

"In lucid prose and with a fluid grasp of diverse cultural text ... Winters demonstrates how a central strain of the black cultural tradition has been to disrupt the narrative of progress.... Against historians who simply cast racial progress as historically inaccurate and posit more cyclical theories of history (that the past recurs in unexpected ways), Winters powerfully contends that progress-talk helps keep injustice in place, creating the justification for collective moral apathy toward racial violence and a disregard for radical racial disparities—all in the name of their eventual eradication." - Alex Zamalin, Political Theory

"Groundbreaking. . . . Sure to be referenced by scholars for many years to come." - Chanté Baker Martin, Journal of Southern History

"The power of Hope Draped in Black is its reenergizing of the critiques of progress narratives, racial uplift discourse, and black respectability." - Margo Natalie Crawford, American Literary History

"The variety of analytical tools used in this book makes it a must read for graduate students or faculty interested in film studies, politics, and, more importantly, religious studies and African American literature and history." - Omar Dieng, Spectrum

"Hope Draped in Black skillfully interweaves insightful arguments with theory, literature, and other aesthetic forms. . . . Strikingly relevant, and [an] important contribution to the American political imagination." - Bianca Borrero-Barreras, Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians

"This is a very good book that is well worth reading. It does an excellent job of charting, in the words of the subtitle, 'the agony of progress.' . . . The concept of melancholic hope is jarring, anomalous, uncanny, and discomfiting. This, precisely, is its aim and virtue." - William David Hart, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Vibrant, analytically rich, and deeply rewarding to read. . . . At heart, Hope Draped in Black exhibits a rare type of intellectual integrity and bravery." - Jonathon S. Kahn, Callaloo

"This is a compelling book and I imagine thinkers will be enriched by its offering for Black, music, and religious studies for years to come." - Jamall A. Calloway, Reading Religion

"Winters has produced a book that speaks to the past century of black religious life in the United States, while refusing to reduce that complex history to a single, simple theme." - Marvin E. Wickware, Journal of Religion

"Written in clear, accessible, and engaging prose…. I recommend Hope Draped in Black to scholars and students interested in African American religion, literature, film, and music, (African) American history, and critical theory." - Justine M. Bakker, Religious Studies Review