Event overview
Jonathan Ward is a Lecturer in American Literature at King鈥檚 College London.
鈥淒on鈥檛 Call Us Dead Because We Look Blue in the Moonlight鈥濃�� An Examination of Queer Black Aesthetics
In discussing Barry Jenkins鈥� film Moonlight (2016) and Danez Smith鈥檚 poetry anthology Don鈥檛 Call Us Dead (2017), this seminar will focus on these texts鈥� engagement with queer Black subjectivity, with particular attention being paid to language, resistance and refusal, visuality and the body. This talk forms part of a larger project that hopes to examine the aesthetics of Black queerness, and think about the potentialities that these aesthetics offer, which will allow interrogation of identity, corporeality, and temporality as they are experienced by the Black subject. In this examination, a variety of texts will be analysed, including Jericho Brown鈥檚 The Tradition (2019), Janelle Mon谩e鈥檚 Dirty Computer (2018), Jay Bernard鈥檚 Surge (2019), Akwaeke Emezi鈥檚 Freshwater (2018), as well as Jenkins鈥� Moonlight and Smith鈥檚 Don鈥檛 Call Us Dead.
Jonathan Ward is a Lecturer in American Literature at King鈥檚 College London. His doctoral work examined racist narratives attached to the black male body and the function of these narratives in maintaining white supremacy. More generally, he is interested in somatic disciplinarity and representations of the body, which feeds into his new interdisciplinary project American (M)Others, examining the use of mothering in American culture as a disciplinary framework, and the way that this intersects with the body.
All welcome- this seminar is free to attend, but advance registration is required.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 17 Mar 2021 | 5:15pm - 6:30pm |
Accessibility
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