| Course Description |
Black Women, Performance, and the Politics of Style will provide an historical overview of iconic Black women entertainers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will explore various Black female archetypes presented on stage and through audio and visual media, consider performance as both an intentional and unintentional political stance, and document the impact Black women have had on the arts and entertainment industries.
The course will involve reading, viewing videos and photographs, and listening to recordings. The course will focus primarily, but not solely, on Black women musicians. Many of the women we will discuss are considered multi-disciplinary – musicians, dancers, actors. Moving across the decades of the 20th century, we will examine how Black women performers responded to racial and gender inequity in the arts and entertainment industries and throughout society. We will compare responses to these inequities with those of contemporary performers in the 21st century. We will explore style as self-expression and commercialization as well as a vehicle for appealing to audiences across demographics. We will consider Black women who perform in more “popular” entertainment arenas as well as performers often overlooked for their contributions because their styles and genres cannot be easily categorized. We will examine the Black female body in and as performance within the context of sexuality, inhabitation, and stereotyping and look at the role of hair and clothing as performance “prop” and political statement.
Because music videos and new media formats such as social media today often precipitate, compliment, or replace live performance, these will also be key in our examination of performance style.
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