Fantasies of Nina Simone

Since her death in 2003, Nina Simone has been the subject of an astonishing number of rereleased, remastered, and remixed albums and compilations as well as biographies, films, viral memes, samples, and soundtracks. In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein uses an archive of Simones performances, images, and writings to examine the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, Civil Rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through the dozens of cover songs that she released of her white male contemporaries such as George Harrison, the Bee Gees, and Bob Dylan. With these covers, Simone explored and claimed the power and perspective that comes with race and gender privilege. Looking at examples from Simones four-decade, genre-bending, careerfrom songbook standards, jazz, and pop to folk, junkanoo, and reggaeand at her works many uptakes and afterlives, Stein mobilizes the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to build a black feminist history with and for this multifaceted performing artist.