Whose Post Racial is it Anyway?: Performing and Theorizing Race in the Post-Racial State

What do we mean when we say post-racial? Whose post-racial is it anyway? Liberals? Conservatives? For some, notions of the post-racial implies some sort of utopia where racial injustice, social and economic disparities and the "possessive" investment in whiteness ceases to exist. For others,the post-racial refers to a rearticulation of existing racial categories what might help us find ways to counter racisms and the hegemony of whiteness. How do we arrive at such a moment? What is it about the existing racial hierarchy that does not hold in this particular-historical moment? How has our exploration of shifting theories of race and performance informed your understanding of the post-racial? You may respond with any text you choose.

Module 6- Sounding the Border and the Post-Racial

Over the past few weeks we have explored the relationship of race and performance to notions of the post-racial body/politic. Scholars such as Alexander Weheliye stress the importance of the sonic and aural within black performance to suggest a theory of black culture as historically performative and radical. Tavia Nyong'o moves to trace notions of a "post-racial" present to a contested history of a "mongrel" past that reflects the persistence of racial governmentality often ignored in our present day obsessions with notions of hybridity. Challenging seemingly utopic answers to race/racisms that are connected to liberal notions of "hybridity,"how might Weheliye and Nyongo's insights in this this module help us make connections between the amalgamation of the sonic and the silence allow us to reevaluate black and white relationships with Zizek's notion of the national Thing? What performative acts constitute the borders of racial crossings past and present?

Module 5- Race Remixed

This module worked to complicate whiteness by interrogating its assumed homogeneity. By interrogating relationships of ethnicity to whiteness and power, we were able to identify the ways in which social, cultural and racial relationships to whiteness secure particular social, cultural and economic interests that are directly tied to the state. How do we read the journey "into whiteness” of particular immigrant communities in the United States such as Jewish, Irish and Polish Americans against immigrant communities of South Asian and Arab decent that,over many years, have shifted from being categorized as non-whites to sometimes "white"?

What is David Roediger asking us to contemplate with his term "colored white"?

Module 4- Atlantic/Pacific/Black/White/Other

This module explores intersecting histories of racial formation in the Atlantic and Pacific troubling the black-white binary by exploring the intersecting histories of other racial groups. How might you see racial performance as what Shannon Steen calls "a kind of geometry to measure the Earth; a way to take stock of America's place in the world" (2010,70). As you post your blogs this week, what examples might you offer on contemporary performance that reflect the shifting racial formation in the United States in our so called "post-racial" moment?

Module 3- Disrupting the Black-White BInary

During this Module we explored texts that challenged the black-white binary that shapes the American racial imaginary. By interrogating places of intersection, overlap and omission between and within theories of racial formation, our readings and performance reflected shifting perspectives of race over time and the limitations inherent in theories of raciology (Gilroy) when we read them within a transnational socio-economic and historical framework. How are scholars and artists interrogating shifting definitions of blackness and whiteness over time? What do we make of the multivalent and conflicting language used to describe race, its ascription to particular groups and its regulation by the state? How might cross-racial performance and transnational comparisons of racial formations foster social, cultural and political connections between and within communities that can enable new ways of thinking about race and ethnicity?

Module 2- Performing Raced and Gendered Bodies

Over the past few weeks, we have explored several theories that have been used to theorize about the performance of race and gender. From Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" and Harry Elam's insightful essay "The Device of Race," to Michel Foucault's "Technologies of the Self"

these different theoretical and methodological approaches explore how subjectivities are produced within and through relationships to power.

As you think about the usefulness of these theories, how do you begin to understand the body and its relationship to power? How do the performances of artists such as Anna Deavere Smith, Nikki S. Lee and Cindy Sherman invite us to think reflexively about subjectivity and gendered processes of identification? How does the conscious choice to "play" performatives of race and gender allow artists to manipulate their bodies in order to interrogate the fluidity of race and gender boundaries? These questions are presented as prompts that may help you as you develop your written responses to the module this week.

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Module 1- Black and White Matters

Over the past few weeks we have read several texts that have given us some insight into the installation of the black-white binary as the guidepost for racial formation in the United States. After reading Cheryl Harris's "Whiteness as Property" and Omi and Winant's Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990's as texts that give you some insight into the racial trajectory mediated by the state and social relationships mediated by the law, what is your take and how do you understand these texts in relationship to some of the visual texts we have explored?

Welcome to THR 702- Theories of Race and Performance

Welcome to the class blog for Theories of Race and Performance, a course on race and performance developed by Nicole Hodges Persley, PHD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at The University of Kansas.

From Uncle Toms' Cabin to Tropic Thunder

the performance of racial identity has become and integral part of the American racial imaginary. How are racial identities performed? How are racial identities complicated by relationships to power, gender, sexuality and nation? This course employs an interdisciplinary approach exploring intersections of the the popular with theoretical texts in Performance Studies, African American Studies, American Studies and Gender Studies. We will explore how theories of race and performance offer new ways to think about gender,race, sexuality and the construction of American identities. We will use this space to post commentary about each module of the course and to share our ideas about the texts in a digital space.

I look forward to sharing this journey with you- Nicole Hodges Persley