Macksey Symposium Keynote Address: "Black Performance, Activism, and the Persistence of Crisis"

Description

Julius Fleming, associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, will deliver the keynote address at the sixth annual Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium at Johns Hopkins University. The keynote is free and open to the public.

Drawing from Fleming's award-winning book, Black Patience (NYU Press, 2022), this talk, titled "Black Performance, Activism, and the Persistence of Crisis," will reexamine the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of Black theater, revealing how Black artists and activists used theater to expose, critique, and repurpose structures of white supremacy. Illuminating the vibrant culture of embodied political performance that ranged from marches and sit-ins to jail-ins and speeches, Fleming will demonstrate the ways in which theater was not only a crucial site of Black artistic and cultural production but also a critical tool in the urgent pursuit of liberation.

The Macksey Symposium is run by the Office of Undergraduate Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity.