Teaching Daughters of the Dust” as a Womanist Film and the Black Arts Aesthetic of Filmmaker Julie Dash

An anthology of essays devoted to the examination of filmmaker Julie Dash’s ground-breaking film, Daughters of the Dust, this book celebrates the importance and influence of this film and positions it within the discourses of Black Feminism, Womanism, the LA Rebellion, New Black Cinema, Great Migration, The Black Arts tradition, Oral History, African American/Black/African diasporan Studies, and Black film/cinema studies. Employing a transdisciplinary approach to examining the film, the anthology includes chapters which examine unique aspects/themes of the film. At the core of each chapter, however, is a recognition of the influence of Black feminist/Womanist theory and politics and African American history—from enslavement to freedom/Reconstruction, Black political identity and liberation movement(s)—and African/ African diasporan cosmology on Dash’s work and how all work in concert in her masterful narrative of Black family, 20th Black women’s identities, and the tension between modernity/tradition experienced by Gullah-Geechee people at the turn of the 20th century.