The Renaissance Reader
Beyonce and Black Queer Popular Culture
Published on 12. December 2025
244 pages
978-1-040-45390-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Renaissance Reader: Beyonce and Black Queer Popular Culture offers a groundbreaking exploration of Beyonce's acclaimed album Renaissance, examining its celebration of Black queer aesthetics through disco, house, and bounce music.
Building on the success of The Lemonade Reader, this interdisciplinary collection brings together popular culture writers and scholars to analyse the album's profound impact on contemporary culture and artistic expression. Through the lens of Black feminist and queer theory, contributors examine how Renaissance engages with and reimagines African American musical traditions while centring Black women's experiences and queer aesthetics. This timely volume tackles crucial questions about Beyonce's evolving artistry, celebrity, and cultural impact, while exploring how her work intersects with contemporary Black feminist and queer theoretical methodologies.
The Renaissance Reader: Beyonce and Black Queer Popular Culture is an essential text for scholars and students in Black women's studies, queer studies, and popular culture, as well as for fans seeking deeper insight into Beyonce's artistic vision and cultural significance.
Building on the success of The Lemonade Reader, this interdisciplinary collection brings together popular culture writers and scholars to analyse the album's profound impact on contemporary culture and artistic expression. Through the lens of Black feminist and queer theory, contributors examine how Renaissance engages with and reimagines African American musical traditions while centring Black women's experiences and queer aesthetics. This timely volume tackles crucial questions about Beyonce's evolving artistry, celebrity, and cultural impact, while exploring how her work intersects with contemporary Black feminist and queer theoretical methodologies.
The Renaissance Reader: Beyonce and Black Queer Popular Culture is an essential text for scholars and students in Black women's studies, queer studies, and popular culture, as well as for fans seeking deeper insight into Beyonce's artistic vision and cultural significance.
Reviews / Votes
"Until recently, writing on Beyonce's Renaissance felt akin to anatomizing a phantasmagoria. This collection of essays examines an album that reclaims house, disco and ballroom genres. Rooting their reflections in Black feminist thought, queer theory and Afrofuturism, contributors explore Beyonce's revival of neglected musical traditions, her homage to her beloved Uncle Johnny, who inspired the album, and her emergence as a "Mutha" figure for queer and trans communities. Through discussions of joy, spatial resistance and sonic innovation, the volume casts Beyonce not simply as performer but as curator of Black queer heritage and legacy."- Ellis Cashmore, Professor of Sociology and author of Celebrity Culture
"A wonderful resource for readers and educators looking to connect history to Beyonce's expansive vision and onward to new queer, Black, and feminist futures. The contributors weave critical academic and personal insights together into a thrilling volume."
- Leah DeVun, Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
File size
2,65 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-45390-2 (9781040453902)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
approx. 12/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€63.30
Not yet published
Book
approx. 12/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€206.40
Not yet published
Persons
Kinitra D. Brooks is the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies and the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University, USA.
Nicholas R. Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, USA, and the former King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center's Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, USA.
Nicholas R. Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, USA, and the former King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center's Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, USA.
Content
Introduction Part I: Black Joy 1. Beyonce's Renaissance: A Queer Portal for Beylievers 2. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: Joy and Spatial Resistance in Beyonce's Renaissance 3. Everybody on Mute: Beyonce's Ability to Silently Slay with Queer Call and Response 4. Welcome to the Renaissance: Defying Distortion, Division, and Difference Part II: Queerness 5. The Irresistible Terrorism of Beyonce: On the War Between Desire, Representation, and Black Queer Freedom 6. The World Uncle Johnny Made: Queers, Children, and other Political Fantasies 7. "They looped. I looped. The samples to feel free": Renaissance and Modern Ballroom as the Loophole of Retreat in the Afterlife of Slavery 8. Transcending the cis-tem: Interpolating Black queer temporality Part III: Sound and Technology 9. "Equestrian Monument, 2023": Horses in Beyonce's Antihistoricist Renaissance World 10. Black Feminist Sonic Rhetorics: Vocal Glitch and the Queering of Temporality in Beyonce Renaissance 11. Look Around, Everybody on Mute!: Renaissance's Potential Impact on Music Education 12. Media All Up in Your Mind: Accentuating Black Queer Vitality through Cultivated Silence Part IV: Afrofuturism 13. The Renaissance Age of Pleasure: The Afro(feminist)futurism of Beyonce & Janelle Monae 14. Mothers of the Renaissance: The Beyoncification of Afrofuturism 15. Church Girls, Blues Women, and the Future of the Black Queer South 16. Breaking to Build: Lessons for a Renaissance A Reflection from a Black Queer Artist
