HYPERVISIBLE RENDERINGS: BLACK FEMINIST PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURIES

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorCarpenter, Faedra Cen_US
dc.contributor.authorRidley, Leticiaen_US
dc.contributor.departmentTheatreen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-09-16T05:40:18Z
dc.date.available2021-09-16T05:40:18Z
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractHypervisible Renderings: Black Feminist Performance in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries examines contemporary Black women’s performance cultures, or the ways that Black women artists, athletes, and musicians (who all occupy the position of celebrity) make culture that articulates their definitions of self and constructs alternative frameworks for Black women to occupy. In service of this, I argue that Black women’s popular entertainment is energized towards the goal of liberating Black women from the limited discursive meanings that animate our lives. The chapters of my dissertation analyze the work of three Black women celebrities from the United States: playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, athlete Serena Jameka Williams, and musician Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. Though my dissertation addresses broad inquires around Black women’s performance, Black feminism, performance studies, and popular culture, I specifically address the following questions: (1) What spaces of world-making are opened and generated by Black women celebrities? (2) How does performance theory and Black feminist theory reconfigure our understanding of hypervisibility? (3) How do public acts of Black women’s performance become an integral intervention and reconstruction of Black womanhood? In answering these questions, I foreground the belief that Black women celebrities and their subsequent cultural productions are central to understanding the cultural fabric of the United States; this belief insists on the critical examination of their processes. I assert that the strategies they employ in their performances are deeply invested in interrogating, challenging, and disrupting the racism and sexism that underpins American popular culture. This project aims to unsettle easy disavowals of Black celebrities and Black women’s contemporary performance cultures by underscoring their potential to instigate social and political disruption in order to generate progress. In doing so, and in the spirit of Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, my dissertation will underscore how Black women celebrities cannot be “written off” as mere entertainers and, instead, highlighting how their work must be recognized as offering substantial contributions to social discourses regarding race, gender, and sexuality in America.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/67jo-twmu
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/27770
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledBlack studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAfrican American studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPerforming artsen_US
dc.titleHYPERVISIBLE RENDERINGS: BLACK FEMINIST PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURIESen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
Ridley_umd_0117E_21784.pdf
Size:
1.22 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
(RESTRICTED ACCESS)

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies Theses and Dissertations