New Growth

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century.

• List of Illustrations  viiiAcknowledgments  xiiiIntroduction. New Growth: Black Hair and Liberation  11. Archive: Slavery, Sentiment, and Feeling  252. Texture: The Coarseness of Racial Capitalism  573. Touch: Camera Images and Contact Revisions  974. Surface: The Art of Black Hair  131Conclusion. Crowning Gestures  155Notes  161Bibliography  177Index  193

"This book is important for anyone interested in symbolism and Black hair (primarily in the American context) with transferability to wider audiences interested in the visual and cultural production of Black bodies through hair practice. Above all, New Growth reminds us, hair is not just an aesthetic; it is form, materiality, symbol, performance and embodied racial construction." - Sweta Rajan-Rankin (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "[Cobb's] analytical savvy pushes readers to think about research that centers Black hair in ways that have been lacking in previous studies. This is what great scholars do. . . . New Growth captures this history by telling the story of how we got to this moment and how we might imagine haptic Black futures. For that, Cobb is to be thanked, and her groundbreaking text, celebrated." - Ingrid Banks (American Historical Review) "New Growth, free of jargon and full of insightful analyses, is a vital history of images and ideas of and about the naturalness of Black hair. Readers interested in the histories of hairdressing and self-fashioning; Black entrepreneurship and publishing in the personal care industry; design aesthetics; Black Power imagery in magazines, film, and television; and recent scholarship on 'surfacism' and visual sensation will find this book especially helpful." - Tiffany E. Barber (Art Bulletin)