Vanishing Acts: Civil Rights Reform and Dramatic Inversion in Douglas Turner Ward\u27s \u3cem\u3eDay of Absence\u3c/em\u3e

Dramatist Douglas Turner Ward\u27s innovative play Day of Absence first premiered in November 1965 in New York City and has seen a recent national revival, having been staged by theatre companies in Berkeley, New York, Washington, D. C., Omaha, and Chicago, as well as the Maitisong Festival in Gaborone, Botswana. It stands as a creative response to the African American civil rights situation after the 1964 act. Ward explores questions of Black labor and mobility and, in doing so, creates opportunities to invert the dynamics that have historically characterized U. S. society.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studythesouth/1005/thumbnail.jp

The wake of blackness: Aesthetic ambivalence and the post -Black Arts era

This dissertation develops from the contention that African-American literary historiography has neglected to recognize the theoretical and methodological contributions of the Black Arts era (1965-1975) to contemporary artistic culture. In this study, I examine the articulation and evocation of a politicized and socially-conscious racial identity that the term “Black” represents during this historical moment. This era\u27s attempt to translate this political enunciation into the realm of expressive culture is designated the “Black Aesthetic”; I argue that this artistic engagement of a socio-political construct yields critical paradigms and methodologies of enduring value. Despite affirmative proclamations of Black identity and articulated loyalties to community associated with the Black Arts era, I find an unrelenting and ubiquitous ambivalence toward “Blackness” and what it signifies in the work of creative artists and social critics. The anxious uncertainties about the demands of Blackness that I track become the tropological ground upon which later writers construct their respective bodies of work. Accordingly, assessments of recent African-American cultural production that fail to take seriously Black Arts aesthetic projects will proffer an incomplete depiction of the artistic and critical worlds they analyze. I have organized this dissertation around two sites of ambivalence that take the form of questions, each of which motivated aesthetic and intellectual culture during the Black Arts era: (1) How is “Blackness” constituted? and (2) What does “Blackness” signify? The two chapters that constitute Part One demonstrate how anxieties about Black community formation provide frameworks for interrogating and ultimately disarticulating Black social identity. The many conflicts over the public meanings of the Black body are the focus in Part Two. These chapters illustrate how the body becomes a critical frame of reference in Black Aesthetic imaginings and how corporeality continues to be put to use in the public sphere. In unearthing this artistic legacy, I put in conversation a wide variety of artists, including: Amiri Baraka and Cheryl Dunye; John A. Williams and Colson Whitehead; Jayne Cortez and Carolivia Herron; among many others. Collectively, the four chapters re-write the history of recent Black literary and artistic production by offering a new genealogy for contemporary work

The wake of blackness: Aesthetic ambivalence and the post -Black Arts era

This dissertation develops from the contention that African-American literary historiography has neglected to recognize the theoretical and methodological contributions of the Black Arts era (1965-1975) to contemporary artistic culture. In this study, I examine the articulation and evocation of a politicized and socially-conscious racial identity that the term “Black” represents during this historical moment. This era\u27s attempt to translate this political enunciation into the realm of expressive culture is designated the “Black Aesthetic”; I argue that this artistic engagement of a socio-political construct yields critical paradigms and methodologies of enduring value. Despite affirmative proclamations of Black identity and articulated loyalties to community associated with the Black Arts era, I find an unrelenting and ubiquitous ambivalence toward “Blackness” and what it signifies in the work of creative artists and social critics. The anxious uncertainties about the demands of Blackness that I track become the tropological ground upon which later writers construct their respective bodies of work. Accordingly, assessments of recent African-American cultural production that fail to take seriously Black Arts aesthetic projects will proffer an incomplete depiction of the artistic and critical worlds they analyze. I have organized this dissertation around two sites of ambivalence that take the form of questions, each of which motivated aesthetic and intellectual culture during the Black Arts era: (1) How is “Blackness” constituted? and (2) What does “Blackness” signify? The two chapters that constitute Part One demonstrate how anxieties about Black community formation provide frameworks for interrogating and ultimately disarticulating Black social identity. The many conflicts over the public meanings of the Black body are the focus in Part Two. These chapters illustrate how the body becomes a critical frame of reference in Black Aesthetic imaginings and how corporeality continues to be put to use in the public sphere. In unearthing this artistic legacy, I put in conversation a wide variety of artists, including: Amiri Baraka and Cheryl Dunye; John A. Williams and Colson Whitehead; Jayne Cortez and Carolivia Herron; among many others. Collectively, the four chapters re-write the history of recent Black literary and artistic production by offering a new genealogy for contemporary work