Annual Black Experiences Lecture
Since its inception, CSREG has organized an Annual Black Experiences Lecture that focuses primarily on the African American Experience and features a prominent scholar from a variety of disciplinary fields. Past speakers at this event have included Angela Davis, Christopher Edley, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Wahneema Lubiano, Tricia Rose and Melissa Harris-Perry to name a few. This lecture series draws an audience consisting of students, faculty, administration and interested community members.
2024-25 Black Experiences Lecture
Dancing the African Diaspora: Shared Memories and Memorializations in Motion
Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2024 7:00–8:30 p.m., Elaine Langone Center, 272
Tommy DeFrantz, Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, Northwestern University
To dance is to re-member, with the body, past occurrences, circumstances and possibilities. Dance operates like a language, but beyond the structures of comprehensible writing or speech. To dance might not be to proclaim or proselytise, but dancing might bring forward explicit modes of social encounter and social provocation. This talk focuses on modes of African American dance expression built from the social impulse to memorialise and remember pasts. Turf Dancing, Second-Line Dancing, Liturgical Dancing (Praise Dance) and selected theatrical dance works tilted towards the expression of a shared memory demonstrate how African American communities have moved through dance as a mode of social expression and memorialisation.