Jasmine E. Johnson
Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
In his seminal essay, "What is this 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?” cultural theorist Stuart Hall explores the relationship between diaspora, culture and performance. For Hall, popular culture is a political and complicated site where various identities are negotiated. Following Hall's lead, this course explores the notion of blackness through performance. Together, we'll ask: What is blackness? How is blackness embodied, felt, heard, represented, and seen through performance? How is Black performance political?
By exploring various performance forms — music, dance, film and literature — this course foregrounds the micro-politics through which blackness is shaped through culture. Performances will be consulted each session which we will use to anchor and complicate the day’s readings. In examining blackness through a number of performance mediums, we will consider the creative labor that Black diasporic peoples produce, and the processes of racialization produced through Black bodies.