Performing Blackness

Catalog description

Inventing identity through black performance. The appropriation and performance of race towards widely divergent ends within and outside of African American culture. Self empowerment through racial stereotyping. Performance as a principal medium of cross cultural imagination and self definition. The "subject" in opposition to the "other." Examination of performance structures emerging from mimicry and appropriation. Performance styles include: the exotic shows of nineteenth century Europe, the blackface minstrel theater, Carnival in the Americas, popular culture. This course is the same as American Studies 3709.