Unleashing the Black Erotic:
Gender and Sexuality—Passion, Power, and Praxis
The College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center and African American Studies Program
2013 Conference and Symposium
September 18-21, 2013
Historic Downtown Charleston, SC
I believe in the erotic and I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women. I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic and other apparently similar forces. We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change. -Audre Lorde
Invited Scholars: Joan Morgan, E. Patrick Johnson, Marlon M. Bailey, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Treva Lindsey, Kaila Story. Jointly hosted by the Avery Research Center and African American Studies at the College of Charleston, this conference will feature presentations addressing various topics, including: Black bodies in popular culture; Black sexuality in television, film, and literature; Black women and the politics of respectability; Hip Hop and hypersexuality of Black Women; alternative modes of Black love and family; the politics and economics of porn; iconic Queer motifs; and the Black body and public health.
*Conference Events Open to the Public:
Keynote lecture by Dr. Joan Morgan, Thursday, September 19, 4:00 pm, Avery Research Center. Joan Morgan, leading hip-hop feminist, is a critically acclaimed critic and editor, and author of the seminal When Chickenheads Come to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks It Down. Her current theorizing of the “politics of pleasure” promises to revolutionize the way we think of black women, desire and respectability.
Dramatic Performance by Dr. E. Patrick Johnson, “Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South,” Friday, September 20, 7:00 pm, Avery Research Center. E. Patrick Johnson is a performer and scholar of performance studies, critical race theory, and queer theory. He is currently Chair of the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also a member of the core faculty in the Department of African American Studies. Johnson’s first book, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity was an important study of how “blackness” was “performed” and contested in different social contexts, particularly in relationship to gender and sexuality. His most recent work is an oral history of black gay men in the southern United States entitled Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, published by the University of North Carolina Press.
For more information visit: http://conferences.avery.cofc.edu/. Please direct questions or concerns to: averyconferences@gmail.com
For additional information, please contact Dr. Conseula Francis, Associate Professor, English Department and Program Director, African American Studies Program at francisc@cofc.edu and Dr. Patricia Williams Lessane, Executive Director, Avery Research Center, at lessanepw@cofc.edu.
