"Performing Memory, History and Identity in the Black World" February 23rd and 24th, 2012
Welcome to the Central Pennsylvania Consortium Africana Studies Conference. This year our theme is "Performing Memory, History and Identity in the Black World". We welcome abstract submissions, especially from graduate students. We look forward to welcoming you to Dickinson College.
Increasingly, scholars are making connections between Africana Studies and Performance Studies, noting that both of these fields employ methodological approaches that lie beyond the scope of traditional disciplines in order to investigate and illuminate the complex identities, histories and memories of individuals and communities that have been historically marginalized or rendered invisible within mainstream academia. In “Black Studies and the Racial Mountain,” Manning Marable famously proposed that Black Studies should be descriptive, corrective and prescriptive, not only adding to the body of scholarship about black communities and reversing misrepresentations, but also challenging and transforming structures that perpetuate inequality within our societies. This stance resonates with Dwight Conquergood’s challenge that Performance Studies incorporate imagination, inquiry and intervention. This conference seeks to build upon the bridges that connect Africana Studies with Performance Studies, explore the varied and exciting approaches that scholars and activists employ in their work, and create a forum for discussing new directions and trends in the study of black subjectivity, history and identity.
To read the full call for papers, please click here.
CONFERENCE AGENDA
February 23
3:00-6:00 p.m. Registration
Stern Center Lobby (208 W. Louther Street, Carlisle, PA)
6:00-7:45 p.m. Welcome and Opening Reception
Dr. Jeremy Ball and Dr. Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy
(Dickinson College)
Stern Great Room
8:00 p.m. Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell their Tales
Performance by Dr. E. Patrick Johnson (Northwestern University)
Weiss Rubendall Recital Hall (240 W. Louther Street, Carlisle, PA)
Reception and book signing following the performance
February 24
8–9 a.m. Breakfast, Stern Center, Great Room
9 a.m. Black Queer Studies, Freedom and Other Human Possibilities
Keynote Address by Dr. Rinaldo Walcott (University of Toronto)
Stern Center, Great Room
Panel Presentations, Stern Center, Room 102
Panel One 10:00 a.m.–11:15 a.m. Documenting and Disseminating the Black Lived
Experience: Photography, Radio and Film as Performative Practice
Jade E. Davis (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “‘She
Looks So Familiar:’ Creating New ‘Lived’ Historical Narratives”
Lara Stein Pardo (University of Michigan) “History, Memory,
and Performance in Contemporary Black Photographic Practice:
Noelle Théard and Donnalyn Anthony”
Christopher Smith (University of Toronto) “Apprehending Black
Queer Diasporas: Towards a Cinematic Ethnography”
Yolanda Covington-Ward (University of Pittsburgh) “Everyday
Performances in the Liberian Diaspora: Creating Community
through On-Line Radio Discourse”
Moderator: Linda Brindeau
11:15 a.m.-11:25 a.m. Coffee Break, Stern Center, Great Room
Panel Two 11:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Articulating the Self in Bodily Practice:
Dance and Theatre as Africana Modes of Identity and Citizenship
Maya Berry (University of Texas, Austin) “A Colonial Performance
in Cuba-of-Tomorrow: Dancing Citizenship ‘Como Ayer’”
Kwame Opare (University of Maryland, College Park) “Reconnecting
with a Past Once Lost: A Voracious and Relentless Search for Self”
Asantewa Sunni-Ali (Arizona State University) “Black Power
Babies: Producing Identity through the Everyday and
Theatricalized Performance of New Afrikan Childhood”
Nikki Yeboah (Northwestern University) "The Specter of Africa"
Moderator: Sarah Skaggs
12:45-1:45 p.m. Lunch, Stern Center, Great Room
Panel Three 2-3:30 p.m. Narrations and Commemorations: Remembering
Difficult Histories, Reconstructing Silenced Her-Stories
Eileen Cherry-Chandler (Bowling Green State University)
“Sister Envoy: Transcultural Performances by African-American
Women Travelers”
Patricia Lott (Northwestern University) “Remembering the Not
Yet Departed: Nineteenth-Century-Antislavery Commemorative
Occasions and the Practice of Reiteration”
Armond R. Towns (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
“The Politics of Produced (Im)mobility: ‘Racial Value’‟on the
Jim Crow Car”
Carmen R. Gillespie (Bucknell University) “Jonestown: A
Vexation—A Reading/ Performance and Discussion”
Rhaisa K. Williams (Northwestern University) “Her-Stories,
As They Have Been Told to Me”
Moderator: Courtney L. Thompson
Panel Four 3:45–5 p.m. Rhythm, Spirituality and Sexuality: Expressing Black
Identities and Cultural Politics through Music
Paul Austerlitz (Gettysburg College) “Participatory Methods in
the Study of Haitian Vodou Performance”
Tabitha Jamie Mary Chester I (Arizona State University) “ ‘Lord
Make Me Over:’‟ The Merging Dichotomies Within the Work of
Anthony Charles William II”
Luis F. Paredes (University at Albany, SUNY) “Choreographing
Afro-Peruvian Identity: Danced to Resist, Dancing to Remember”
Sarah Stefana Smith (University of Toronto) “‘My Mic Sounds
Nice:’ Towards a Black Queer Diasporic Critique of Toronto’s Hip
Hop Karaoke”
Marsha Horsley (Indiana University) "The Performativity of Man Down and the Politics of the Erotic: Rihanna & (Re)membering Rape"
Moderator: Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy
7:30 p.m. Dinner, Stern Center, Great Room
Closing Remarks by Javan Howard and Rockyatu Otoo, Dickinson
College, Africana Studies Alumni
*This agenda is subject to change. Please check this website again in mid-February.*
ABOUT OUR PRESENTERS
"E. Patrick Johnson is Professor, Chair, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies and Professor in African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar/artist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance. His book Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, published by Duke University Press in 2003, has won several awards, including the Lilla A. Heston Award, the Errol Hill Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He co-authored (with Mae G. Henderson) Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology with Duke University Press. E. Patrick Johnson is currently performing Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales, based on excerpts from his book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History, published by the University of North Carolina Press. The narratives were collected between 2004 and 2006 from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South. The men hail from fifteen different states and range in age from 19 to 93."
For more information on E. Patrick Johnson, please click here.
*Reception and book signing after performance.*
"Rinaldo Walcott is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies with an emphasis on queer sexualities, masculinity and cultural politics. A secondary research area is multicultural and transnational debates with an emphasis on nation, citizenship and coloniality. As an interdisciplinary scholar Rinaldo Walcott has published on music, literature, film and theater among other topics. All of Walcott's research is founded in a philosophical orientation that is concerned with the ways in which coloniality shapes human relations across social and cultural time. Walcott is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insonmiac Press, 1997 with a second revised edition in 2003); he is also the editor of Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism (Insomniac, 2000); and the Co-editor with Roy Moodley of Counselling Across and Beyond Cultures: Exploring the Work of Clemment Vontress in Clinical Practice (University of Toronto Press, 2010)"
For more information on Rinaldo Walcott, please click here.
Travel, Reservations and Accommodations We have reserved a block of rooms at the Carlisle Comfort Suites and at the Dickinson College Vincett Guest House.
Carlisle Comfort Suites
Address: 10 South Hanover Street Carlisle, PA 17013
Phone numbers: (800) 704-1188 or (717) 960-1000
Fax Number: (717) 960-1010
Check-in/Check-out: Check-in Time: 3 p.m. Check-out Time: 12:00 noon
Vincett Guest House Address: 275 West Louther Street, Carlisle, PA 17013 Check-in/Check-out: Check-in Time: 1 p.m., Check-out Time: 11:00am
To view pictures of the Vincett House, please click here.
For planning your visit and accommodations, please contact Yoleidy Rosario, Africana Studies Academic Coordinator, at rosarioy@dickinson.edu or at 717-243-1963. For further travel information, including directions, ground and air transportation, parking, and the Carlisle community, please click here.
CPC Africana Studies Conference Planning Committee:
Jeremy Ball, Co-Chair, History and Africana Studies, Dickinson College
Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy, Co-Chair, Africana Studies, Dickinson College
Susannah Bartlow, Women’s Center, Dickinson College
Linda Brindeau, French, Dickinson College
Benjamin Ngong, French & French and Francophone Studies, Dickinson College
Courtney Thompson, Africana Studies, Dickinson College