Date of Award
Summer 8-12-2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Art & Art History
First Advisor
Maria Antonella Pelizzari
Second Advisor
Lynda Klich
Academic Program Adviser
Maria Antonella Pelizzari
Abstract
This thesis examines the text and images contained in James Van Der Zee and Camille Billops’s seminal photobook The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978). The title, frontispiece, and introduction, combined with Van Der Zee’s funerary portraits, illuminate the connection between African-American rituals of death and Pan-Africanism. While these two concepts appear to be distinct, they are both predicated upon and intrinsically linked to key values in African American culture, including liberation and the meaning of community. Each chapter focuses on a different contextual framework for situating The Harlem Book of the Dead within the historical and political moment in which it was created: post-mortem photography, the interconnectedness of Christianity and mourning rituals within the African American community, Pan-Africanism.
Recommended Citation
Feldman, Jessica D., "The Harlem Book of the Dead: Pan-Africanism, Funerary Portraiture, and the African-American Way of Death" (2020). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/629