Interview with Daphne Brooks : what is performance studies?.

Interview with Daphne Brooks, conducted by Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This interview is a part of a series curated by the Hemispheric Institute, articulated around the question 'What is Performance Studies?' The series aims to provide a multifaceted approach to the often difficult task of defining the coordinates of both a field of academic study as well as a lens through which to assess and document cultural practice and embodied behavior. The contingent definitions documented in this series are based on the groundbreaking experiences and the scholarly endeavors of renowned figures in contemporary performance studies and practice. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

Daphne A. Brooks is an Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University where she teaches courses on African-American literature and culture, performance studies, critical gender studies, and popular music culture. She is the author of two books: Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (2006), winner of the 2007 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American Theater Studies, and Jeff Buckley's Grace (2005). She is also the editor of The Great Escapes: The Narratives of William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and William Craft (2007) and the performing arts volume of The Black Experience in the Western Hemisphere, series eds. Howard Dodson and Colin Palmer (2006). Brooks is the author of various articles on race, gender, performance and popular culture such as 'Burnt Sugar: Post-Soul Satire and Rock Memory, ' 'It's Not Right But It's Okay: Contemporary Black Women's R & B and the House that Terry McMillan Built, ' and 'The Deeds Done in My Body: Black Feminist Theory, Performance, and the Truth About Adah Isaacs Menken.' Brooks is currently developing new projects on racial masquerade in rock music culture, and black feminist performance and satire. She is the past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship Program, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Brooks has also held residence at U.C. Berkeley as a President's Postdoctoral Fellow and at Harvard University as a W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute Fellow. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics