Keep On Keepin' On: Performing and Imag(in)ing Leadership and Home-Space within the Black Diaspora explores how specific embodiments of race and racial belonging affect the formation of local and global activism and how performance and media ethnography can further theorize upon these processes. This dissertation examines three oral histories as performances of race, transnational imaginary, and social activism in what is commonly understood as the black Diaspora. This research argues that the listening to and the telling of life histories can revision performances of race as an inclusive organizing concept that reaches across cultural boundaries. It also experiments with ways in which media and performance intersect and how these intersections can productively transform each discipline as well as add to the theory and practice of ethnography. Among its contributions, Keep On Keepin’ On opens further research on how performance studies and media ethnography can ground political theory within everyday life and can simultaneously locate and create possibilities for social justice
