Vincent L. Wimbush is founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures.

• Introduction:“Everything About Me Was Magic”: The Black-Fleshed and the Making and Management of ModernitiesVincent L. Wimbush1 Scripturalectics and Masquerading FleshShay Welch2 Under the Sign of “The African”: Masquerade and Identity Formation and Deployment in Equiano…Vassa’s Interesting Narrative/MemoirCarolyn M. Jones Medine3 Within the Veil and Between the Masks: Reflections on Unveilings and Unmaskings after the ApocalypseJacqueline Hidalgo4 Between the Veil and the Mirror: Josephine Baker and the Scripturalization of Black Modernity in FranceCécile Coquet-Mokoko5 Whose Flesh? Flesh Tone as Scripturalization in the Art and Practice of Ballet P. Kimberleigh Jordan6 “Relentlessly Pursu[ing] All Who Live in Darkness”: The African Read as Bondage Through Devotional Missionary Life WritingRachel E. C. Beckley7 Seeking Solace: Finding Hush Harbors for Healing Scripturalization HorrorsVelma E. Love8 Toni Morrison and the Masquerade of Black Oral Imprint with a Meditation on The Preparation of Soft-Boiled EggsMiles P. Grier9 “There Remains Only Constant Struggle”: Scholarship as Telling Stories of Radical Black SubjectivitiesRosetta Ross10 Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa and Kossola or Cujo Lewis: History Writing and the MasqueradeMarla Frederick

With Masquerade, Vincent Wimbush has summoned us once again to “think hard about hard things.” This latest volume, a collection of edited essays by scholars from across disciplines, expands Wimbush’s now two-decades long project of elucidating modernity’s scriptures—those regimes of knowledge that magically bind us to the machineries of empire. Throughout these essays, which brilliantly complement an eponymously named multimedia project, the writers expand our conceptual and technological understandings of scriptures as stages for masquerade, fantastically evoking a spirit of transgression that destabilizes what we accept as natural and real.

Vincent L. Wimbush is founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures.

• Introduction:“Everything About Me Was Magic”: The Black-Fleshed and the Making and Management of ModernitiesVincent L. Wimbush1 Scripturalectics and Masquerading FleshShay Welch2 Under the Sign of “The African”: Masquerade and Identity Formation and Deployment in Equiano…Vassa’s Interesting Narrative/MemoirCarolyn M. Jones Medine3 Within the Veil and Between the Masks: Reflections on Unveilings and Unmaskings after the ApocalypseJacqueline Hidalgo4 Between the Veil and the Mirror: Josephine Baker and the Scripturalization of Black Modernity in FranceCécile Coquet-Mokoko5 Whose Flesh? Flesh Tone as Scripturalization in the Art and Practice of Ballet P. Kimberleigh Jordan6 “Relentlessly Pursu[ing] All Who Live in Darkness”: The African Read as Bondage Through Devotional Missionary Life WritingRachel E. C. Beckley7 Seeking Solace: Finding Hush Harbors for Healing Scripturalization HorrorsVelma E. Love8 Toni Morrison and the Masquerade of Black Oral Imprint with a Meditation on The Preparation of Soft-Boiled EggsMiles P. Grier9 “There Remains Only Constant Struggle”: Scholarship as Telling Stories of Radical Black SubjectivitiesRosetta Ross10 Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa and Kossola or Cujo Lewis: History Writing and the MasqueradeMarla Frederick

With Masquerade, Vincent Wimbush has summoned us once again to “think hard about hard things.” This latest volume, a collection of edited essays by scholars from across disciplines, expands Wimbush’s now two-decades long project of elucidating modernity’s scriptures—those regimes of knowledge that magically bind us to the machineries of empire. Throughout these essays, which brilliantly complement an eponymously named multimedia project, the writers expand our conceptual and technological understandings of scriptures as stages for masquerade, fantastically evoking a spirit of transgression that destabilizes what we accept as natural and real.

Vincent L. Wimbush is founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures.

• Introduction:“Everything About Me Was Magic”: The Black-Fleshed and the Making and Management of ModernitiesVincent L. Wimbush1 Scripturalectics and Masquerading FleshShay Welch2 Under the Sign of “The African”: Masquerade and Identity Formation and Deployment in Equiano…Vassa’s Interesting Narrative/MemoirCarolyn M. Jones Medine3 Within the Veil and Between the Masks: Reflections on Unveilings and Unmaskings after the ApocalypseJacqueline Hidalgo4 Between the Veil and the Mirror: Josephine Baker and the Scripturalization of Black Modernity in FranceCécile Coquet-Mokoko5 Whose Flesh? Flesh Tone as Scripturalization in the Art and Practice of Ballet P. Kimberleigh Jordan6 “Relentlessly Pursu[ing] All Who Live in Darkness”: The African Read as Bondage Through Devotional Missionary Life WritingRachel E. C. Beckley7 Seeking Solace: Finding Hush Harbors for Healing Scripturalization HorrorsVelma E. Love8 Toni Morrison and the Masquerade of Black Oral Imprint with a Meditation on The Preparation of Soft-Boiled EggsMiles P. Grier9 “There Remains Only Constant Struggle”: Scholarship as Telling Stories of Radical Black SubjectivitiesRosetta Ross10 Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa and Kossola or Cujo Lewis: History Writing and the MasqueradeMarla Frederick

With Masquerade, Vincent Wimbush has summoned us once again to “think hard about hard things.” This latest volume, a collection of edited essays by scholars from across disciplines, expands Wimbush’s now two-decades long project of elucidating modernity’s scriptures—those regimes of knowledge that magically bind us to the machineries of empire. Throughout these essays, which brilliantly complement an eponymously named multimedia project, the writers expand our conceptual and technological understandings of scriptures as stages for masquerade, fantastically evoking a spirit of transgression that destabilizes what we accept as natural and real.