Content area
Full Text
Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949. By Anna Everett. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. x, 365 pp. Cloth, $54.95, ISBN 0-8223-2606-X. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-8223-2614-0.)
The author of Returning the Gaze has set out to, and indeed succeeded in, writing a history of movies without actually taking up any movies. On its face, this would seem unpromising stuff, sort of like writing about umpires instead of baseball. Yet the result is an interesting contribution to the ever-evolving literature on the subject of African Americans and their historic relationship as subjects, objects, makers, and viewers to the medium of movies.
Anna Everett has set yet another daunting task for herself. to set forth a historical view of black film criticism that might "be preserved and positioned alongside the canonical histories of...