Project Overview

The pursuit of freedom has been a central preoccupation of Black people ever since the advent of the Transatlantic slave trade in the 16th century when Europeans led the taking of Africans from their lands to build European settlements in North America and the Caribbean (Bakare-Yusuf; Cooper; Diverlus, Hudson and Ware; Fanon; McKittrick; Williams). For centuries, Black people in these geographical regions have used performance, theatre, visual art, music and other means of expression to describe nuances of Black people’s lives in the public and private spheres that influence everyday life (Brand; Gale; Elam and Jackson; Harrison, Walker II and Edwards; Henderson; hooks; Hope; Madison). Building on the work of Black studies scholarship and artistic practices, the objective of Dr. Keleta-Mae’s Black And Free Research-Creation Project is to examine what Black art and culture from different parts of the world reveal about blackness and freedom in the 21st century.

Next Project

Work Cited

• Bakare-Yusuf, Bibi. “The Economy of Violence: Black Bodies and the Unspeakable Terror”. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. Eds. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. New York: Routledge, 1999. 311-23. Print.
• Brand, Dionne. At the Full and Change of the Moon. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1999. Print.
• Diverlus, Rodney, Sandy Hudson and Syrus Marcus Ware, eds. Until We’re Free: Black Lives Matter in Canada. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2020. Print.
• Elam Jr., Harry J and Kennell Jackson, eds. Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. Print.
• Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Print.
• Gale, Lorena. Angélique. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 1999. Print.
• Harrison, Paul Carter, Victor Leo Walker II, and Gus Edwards, eds. Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
• Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition”. Changing our own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women. Ed. Cheryl A. Wall. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. 16-37. Print.
• hooks, bell. Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981. Print.
• Hope, Donna P. Inna di Dancehall: Popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica. Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2006. Print.
• Madison, D. Soyini. “Staging Fieldwork/Performing Human Rights.” The Safe Handbook of Performance Studies. Eds. D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006. 397-418. Print.
• McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print.
• Williams, Patricia J. “On Being the Object of Property”. Writing on the body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Eds. K. Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury. New York: Columbia Press, 1997. 155-175. Print.