The talk will discuss the embodied and critical artistry of performance ethnography and how the felt-sensing experiences of fieldwork research are enacted and translated both on the public stage and within the intimate, ethnographic encounters of those everyday moments in the field. As more and more people, across academic disciplines and grass roots initiatives, are committed to ethnographic work they are compelled to share their experiences, to become unapologetic advocates, and to communicate lessons learned from their field research across landscapes and borders—distant and near—to their home-place locations as well as to others, e.g., friends, colleagues, collaborators, and strangers extending and transforming ethnographic inquiry forward to multiple constituencies and artistic expressions. The keynote will share examples of performance ethnography as an affective, felt-sensing politics staged across private and public ethnographic spaces. The talk will also call upon beauty as a communicative tactic for justice in bringing forth storied ethnographies as embodied experiences and enfleshed critique.
Soyini Madison (PhD 1989, Northwestern University) is professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University School of Communication, with appointments in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Anthropology. Professor Madison lived and worked in Ghana, as a Senior Fulbright Scholar conducting field research on the interconnections between traditional religion, political economy, and indigenous performance tactics.
This lecture is the second of three lectures presented by the Performance Studies Research Group, and is free and open to the public. A reception to follow. For questions, please contact Scott Magelssen, Associate Professor of Theatre History, at magelss@uw.edu.