SHOGA BLOGS & ESSAYS

Shoga Blogs and First Person Essays are an eclectic mix of history, race, music, Black queer movies and more. On occasion, they're about Dr. Philipson's pet peeve of the day. We can't guarantee the topics, but we can guarantee that the writing is always top-notch!

In PROFESSORIAL FORAYS, Dr. Philipson writes about queer Black history, the Harlem Renaissance, Black-Jewish interrelations, the perils and pleasures of allyship, and sometimes his pet peeve of the day.

In FIRST PERSON ESSAYS, Dr. Philipson writes about his personal thoughts and experiences.

SHOGA LENS focuses on films featuring queer Black characters used to be a rare phenomenon. Now they're everywhere, but we have a particular perspective that you won't find anywhere else.

PROFESSORIAL FORAYS

Paris, je t'aime!

Nous quatre a Paris Jazz paved the way for the establishment of an African American expatriate community in Paris. The French were blown...

Operation Moses

Ethiopian Jews Airlifted to Israel During the height of King Solomon’s reign of glory, o Best Beloved!, the dark-skinned Queen of Sheba,...

The Black Israelites

The Commandment Keepers of Harlem First of all, they’re not Jews – at least not as understood by Jewish consensus. (Jews are either...

Marcus Garvey's Antisemitic Flare-Up

Garvey handcuffed to U.S. Marshal on his way to prison. Marcus Garvey was, without question, one of the most consequential and...

Queer Eye for the Renaissance GuyThe Impact of Alain Locke

Alain Locke’s claim to immortality rightly rests on his epochal 1925 anthology, “The New Negro” and midwifing the first generation of...

The Queer Harlem Renaissance and the Visual Arts: Richmond Barthé

Of the many visual artists born at the turn of the last century who came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, only one has been pegged...

View All Professional Forays

FIRST PERSON ESSAYS

A Basset in Paris

Lady Hamlet and her humans, 1961 It wasn’t easy for a dog used to the freedom of the San Gabriel Mountains to accommodate herself to the...

Fear of a Little Black Dress

When I was coming out in the Stone Age of the 1980s, drag was not well understood (at least by me) or widely accepted, even in the gay...

Growing Up Clueless

And when I say "clueless," I'm talking specifically about African American culture. I grew up in Pasadena during the 50s and 60s. There...

"My Son, the Fegeleh"

One blanket statement we can endorse about American Jewish boys and men is that we are neurotically attached to our mothers. Since our...

Aliyah Holds No Allure For Me

The young ulpanist in the rose greenhouse. Aliyah. In its Biblical context, “aliyah” is a Hebrew word meaning “to rise up” and...