AHA Session 248
Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History 9
Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History 9
Saturday, January 6, 2024: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Continental Ballroom 2 (Hilton Union Square, Ballroom)
Chair:
Richard Daily, Penn State University
Papers:
Comment:
Julian Kevon Glover, Virginia Commonwealth University
Session Abstract
Black Queer Folks have always had to perform for their survival and wellbeing. Beginning with the life of Little Richard, this panel explores the ways in which Black Queer individuals use performance to push back against political structures for their own freedom. From the stage and text, through the American penal system, all the way to refugee camps across the Atlantic, this panel interrogates how politics, entertainment and international law interact with Black Queer diasporic bodies, and how those bodies push back against these systems – systems that are inherently built to control, corral, and erase them. By looking at various periods across the twentieth century, we aim to illustrate how performance as liberatory praxis, needs to shift depending on the situatedness of Black Queer Folks and how this necessary shifting of performance lays a blueprint for modern day liberation for all Black people around the world. This shifting illuminates the Black privacy politics and intimacy inherent in Black Queer self-making and worldbuilding.
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