The Afterlives of Kathleen Collins

"An essential addition to monographs on black independent filmmakers who emerged from the 1960s Civil Rights movement, such as Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, as well as woman film artists in general."

~Tama Lynne Hamilton-Wray, coeditor of New Frontiers in the Study of the Global African Diaspora: Between Uncharted Themes and Alternative Representations

"L.H. Stallings' Afterlives of Kathleen Collins explores the life, life's work, and posthumous significance of Kathleen Collins as a filmmaker. This monograph masterfully weaves together biopic, speculative fiction, film theory and archival film study to uncover Collins at the forefront of black women's filmmaking. Where much of the scholarship on black film—fiction and nonfiction—focuses on masculinists works and directors, Stallings work is groundbreaking in that it treats the body (and afterlife) of a black woman's work with a critical attention we have yet to see."

~Jasmine Cobb, author of Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century

"An indispensable contribution to Black film studies, L. H. Stallings' incisive and revelatory book is a stunning meditation on the work, life, career, and legacy of Kathleen Collins. Brilliantly moving us beyond the limits of a traditional biography or auteur study, her concept of "afterlife-writing" explores the multifaced and formidable Collins in a compelling, nuanced, and cohesive fashion while simultaneously attending to the anteriority of Black film and visuality. With its speculative approach to Collins' work, Stalling's book models a way to engage the aesthetics, artistry, and afterlives of Black women who, like Collins, are enigmatic and emblematic visionaries of Black life and freedom."

~Samantha N. Sheppard, Cornell University

"L.H. Stallings presents us with a formidable intervention in scholarship about Black film in this intimate study of the life and work of late filmmaker Kathleen Collins. Deftly weaving through ideas about authorship, form, and politics, Stallings innovates the brilliant concept of "afterlives" in place of biography, impressively capturing Collins's brilliance while simultaneously honoring the filmmaker's own ideologies and aesthetics. By treating Collins's life and art not as past objects to be unearthed, but rather, as living texts with reverberating possibilities across time, Stallings offers us a dazzling example of how we might begin to understand the beautiful complexity of Black women's creative production."

~Racquel Gates, Author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture