Description: The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade, edited by Kimberly R. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, is a holistic analysis of the decade that focuses on major turning points and developments in literature, entertainment, politics, and social experimentation. This analysis ult...
Brief description: Dr. Reynaldo Anderson currently serves as the Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Reynaldo is currently the Executive Director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), an international network of artists, intellectuals, creatives, and activists. He is the co-editor of the following anthologies and journals, Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness and The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design (2015, 2019), Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (2018), Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, a special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), and "When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity" (The Journal of Futures Studies, 2019). He is also the author of numerous articles on Africana Studies and Communication studies and helped conceive the joint BSAM and NY LIVE Arts Curating the End of the World online exhibitions (2020-2021). He has presented papers in areas of communications, Africana studies, Afrofuturism, and critical theory in the US and abroad.
Review Quotes:
"The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade provides a reading of the American 1980s in the broadest possible terms, expanding our understanding of the decade across politics, sociology, and culture. Its multi-disciplinary approach offers new ways in which to conceptualize both America's relationship with itself and the nation's position in a rapidly globalizing world. The book is an excellent resource for thinking about how one writes the history of the recent past." --Graham Thompson, University of Nottingham
"The authors of this unusually varied collection of essays examining the 1980s include established academics and younger scholars in disciplines ranging from history and literature to film criticism and cultural studies. Ronald Reagan is a central figure, but he does not dominate the collection, which includes topics as diverse as date rape, MTV, GI Joe action figures, and college radio programming. Some essays approach conventional topics in unconventional ways. US policy in Latin America is explored through Oliver Stone's film Salvador, and African Americans are examined through hip-hop, policy on South African apartheid, and black masculinity (represented by Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Eddie Murphy). Film and music are at the core of several essays, and AIDS is investigated through its impact on Broadway theater. Reagan policies receive scrutiny in articles on FBI surveillance, privatization, anti-labor activities and deregulation, and Supreme Court appointments and decisions, and the conservative turn of US politics receives attention in several essays. Although quirky, this collection is satisfying. It challenges readers to look beyond conventional political retrospectives and explore the impact of cultural trends, alternative viewpoints, social problems, and the changing role of the US in the world. Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries." --Choice Reviews