Understanding Blackness through Performance

Zakiya R. Adair, University of Missouri, USA Gayle Baldwin, University of North Dakota, USA Myron M. Beasley, Bates College, USA Simon Dickel, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany Vanina Géré, University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France Mae G. Henderson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Kristin Leigh Moriah, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA James Smalls, University of Maryland, USA Stephany Spaulding, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA Toniesha L. Taylor, Prairie View A & M University, USA Rinaldo Walcott, University of Toronto, Canada

Introduction. Black Beings, Black Embodyings: Notes on Contemporary Artistic Performances and their Cultural Interpretations; Jean-Paul Rocchi, Anne Crémieux, and Xavier Lemoine PART I: BLACK BEING, BLACK EMBODYING: THE POWER OF AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY 1. Each Taking Risk, Performing Self: Theorizing (Dis)Narratives; Myron Beasley 2. Transformative Womanist Rhetorical Strategies: Contextualizing Discourse and the Performance of Black Bodies of Desire; Toniesha L. Taylor 3. 'Is Anybody Walkin'?': the Black Body on the Runway as a Performance of the Politics of Desire; Gayle Baldwin PART II: SHATTERED FRAMES AND THE ONLOOKER: STRATEGIES AND SIGNIFICATIONS 4. Transgressive (Re)presentations: Black Women, Vaudeville and the Politics of Performance in Early Trans-Atlantic Theatre; Zakiya R. Adair 5. Kara Walker's War on Racism: Mining (Mis)Representations of Blackness; Vanina Géré 6. Between Mumblecore and Post-Black Aesthetics: Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy; Simon Dickel 7. From Book to Film: Desire in Precious (Lee Daniels, 2009), adapted from Push by Sapphire (1995); Anne Crémieux PART III: THROUGH PERFORMANCE: DESIRE AND THE BLACK SUBJECT 8. Black Queer Studies, Freedom and Other Human Possibilities; Rinaldo Walcott 9. About Face, or, What Is This 'Back' in B(l)ack Popular Culture?: From Venus Hottentot to Video Hottie; Mae G. Henderson 10. Margin Me: Intentional Marginality in the Queered Borderlands of Hiphop; Stephany Spaulding PART IV: SHIFTING PARADIGMS OF IDENTITIES 11. Sculpting Black Queer Bodies and Desires: The Case of Richmond Barthé; James Smalls 12. I Am Not a Race Man: Racial Uplift and the Post-Black Aesthetic in Percival Everett's I Am Not Sidney Poitier; Kristin Leigh Moriah 13. Embodying Hybridity: Anna Deavere Smith's Identity Cross-Overs; Xavier Lemoine