Aristotle and Black Drama

This book invites us to revise existing genealogies of black theater and offers us the provocative idea of classical theory of drama as a handmaiden for the theater of civil disobedience. Like the best ideas it is bold and original and, on reading, makes perfect sense.

~Emily Greenwood, Professor of Classics, Yale University

Situating Aristotle's Poetics as a major intertext, Rankine demonstrates that perhaps the most radical form of classical reception is that which sets things in motion--both in the movements of actors on stage and in the conscience of those watching.

~Denise Eileen McCoskey, Associate Professor of Classics, Affiliate, Black World Studies, Miami University

…this book will be thought provoking and richly rewarding for specialists in classical and/or black literature.

~Choice

The reader is challenged to move beyond the moral constraints of Aristotlelian drama and adopt a consciousness that involves recognizing the interplay of various sociopolitical forces and how they operate simultaneously to create an environment where convention, rather than principle, is challenged.

~Chy Sprauve, Lehman College, Journal of African American Studies