BIPOC DESIGN HISTORY // Black Design in America
BIPOC DESIGN HISTORY // Black Design in America
By The Shop at MATTER
Black Design in America is the first in a series of BIPOC Centered design history courses facilitated by Polymode.
Through pre-recorded lectures, readings, and live discussions, the class will shed light on moments of oppression and visibility. The series revisits and rewrites the course of design history in a way that centers previously marginalized designers, cultural figures—and particularly BIPOC and QTPOC people.
The books in the list are books cited or mentioned by the presenters, have contributions from the presenters included, or are just damn good books to know about, that students and other contributors to the course have identified for your enjoyment.
Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986
Louise Sandhaus
$55.00 $51.15Recommended by Diana Murphy
Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975
Rebecca Zorach
$132.19Recommended by James Goggin
When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story about Race in America's Cities and Universities
Sharon Egretta Sutton
$44.85Recommended by Jesse Seegers
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein
$30.00 $27.90Recommended by BIPOC Design History
F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature
William J. Maxwell
$26.95Recommended by Bryce Wilner
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Saidiya Hartman
$17.95 $16.69Recommended by Colette Gaiter
Marx's Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day: Selected Writings
Raya Dunayevskaya
$40.25"Gramsci’s Philosophy of Praxis" recommended by Tanvi
Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design (Revised)
Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton and Ellen Lupton
$27.95 $25.99Recommended by Silas Munroe
Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture
Shawn Michelle Smith
$32.14Recommended by Silas Munroe
A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress
Deborah Willis and David Levering Lewis
$21.99Recommended by Jason Forrest
Cool Pose: The Dilemma of Black Manhood in America (Touchstone)
Janet Mancini Billson and Richard Majors
$14.95Recommended by Tasheka Arceneaux- Sutton
Stylin': African-American Expressive Culture, from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Revised)
Shane White and Graham White
$44.34Recommended by Elli Young
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
$5.95 $5.53Recommended by BIPOC Design History and Phillip Alnswick-Tobias
Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print
$95.94
Recommended by Jamie Mahoney
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
$38.00 $35.34Recommended by Rosa Hyun
Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
Safiya Umoja Noble
$34.50Recommended by BIPOC Design History
Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
Ruha Benjamin
$19.95 $18.55Recommended by Elizabeth Chin and Colette Gaiter
This (growing) list is made in collaboration with the facilitators, presenters, and audience in the course and with MATTER, a Black- and woman-owned bookstore serving the book needs of all revolutionaries, designers, and other thinking persons. Visit us in person in Denver, CO, or online at shopatmatter.com. If you seek used or collectible books, we can accommodate those requests by phone, email, or in person.