Zachary F. Price is an Associate Professor of Drama in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine where he is a member of the doctoral faculty. He also holds a core appointment in the Department of African American Studies. In addition to training doctoral students, his research and pedagogy focuses on African American drama and Black cultural performance as well as comparative race studies and critical race theory. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University, College Station where he taught performance theory and practice. Before joining the faculty at TAMU, Price was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and has also held appointments as an Assistant Adjunct Professor and Assistant Researcher in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA where he taught courses in Theater, Performance, and Film Studies. He also held an appointment as an Assistant Researcher in the Bunche Center for African American Studies where he conducted research on the diversity of minorities and women in the film and entertainment industry. He received a Ph.D. in Theater Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, M.F.A. in Theater Studies from the New School University, and B.S. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and As... more What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and Asian Americans? What does jazz have to do with martial arts? In 1997 Fred Ho began creating a series of Afro Asian jazz martial arts performance pieces that brought together a synthesis of martial arts practitioners, dancers, and jazz artists, reflecting the legacy of the Bandung Conference of 1955.
What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and As... more What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and Asian Americans? What does jazz have to do with martial arts? In 1997 Fred Ho began creating a series of Afro Asian jazz martial arts performance pieces that brought together a synthesis of martial arts practitioners, dancers, and jazz artists, reflecting the legacy of the Bandung Conference of 1955.
This article uses Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) to consider slave cinema (f... more This article uses Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) to consider slave cinema (films that take slavery as their main subject) as unique sites of labor in which Black bodies are organized as commodities to perform economies of “pleasure and terror” (Hartman:1997) on the screen as cultural workers under the rubric of United States capitalism and structural hierarchies that privilege a white lens within the Hollywood film industry. The economies of terror and pleasure produced through these films reify colorblind ideology and perpetuate a racial regime that denies audiences the ability to emphasize with Black people or view them as full human beings.
In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination, Zachary F. Price
illumi... more In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination, Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these historically marginalized groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s appearance in Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death, Ron van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between their distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative. His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By directing his analysis to this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a compelling example of nonessentialist liberation for the twenty-first century.
What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and As... more What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and Asian Americans? What does jazz have to do with martial arts? In 1997 Fred Ho began creating a series of Afro Asian jazz martial arts performance pieces that brought together a synthesis of martial arts practitioners, dancers, and jazz artists, reflecting the legacy of the Bandung Conference of 1955.
What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and As... more What is Afro Asia? What are the political and cultural connections between Black Americans and Asian Americans? What does jazz have to do with martial arts? In 1997 Fred Ho began creating a series of Afro Asian jazz martial arts performance pieces that brought together a synthesis of martial arts practitioners, dancers, and jazz artists, reflecting the legacy of the Bandung Conference of 1955.
This article uses Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) to consider slave cinema (f... more This article uses Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) to consider slave cinema (films that take slavery as their main subject) as unique sites of labor in which Black bodies are organized as commodities to perform economies of “pleasure and terror” (Hartman:1997) on the screen as cultural workers under the rubric of United States capitalism and structural hierarchies that privilege a white lens within the Hollywood film industry. The economies of terror and pleasure produced through these films reify colorblind ideology and perpetuate a racial regime that denies audiences the ability to emphasize with Black people or view them as full human beings.
In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination, Zachary F. Price
illumi... more In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination, Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these historically marginalized groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s appearance in Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death, Ron van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between their distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative. His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By directing his analysis to this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a compelling example of nonessentialist liberation for the twenty-first century.
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illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian
American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these
historically marginalized groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s
appearance in Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death, Ron van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between their distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative. His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By directing his analysis to this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not
only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a
compelling example of nonessentialist liberation for the twenty-first century.
illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian
American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these
historically marginalized groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s
appearance in Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death, Ron van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between their distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative. His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By directing his analysis to this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not
only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a
compelling example of nonessentialist liberation for the twenty-first century.