Shame and Scandal and Zombies

Prof. Tavia Nyong’o

Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

This lecture traces the circum-Atlantic itinerary of a
calypso tune from its origins on a Hollywood backlot in the 1940s to
the ska revival of the 1970s. Along the way the song gains and loses
lyrics that disclose repressed histories of slavery and miscegenation.
How might a catchy, harmless refrain echo a modernity that found, in
the figure of the undead, its hauntological emblem?

Professor Nyong’o is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. His research interests include the intersection of race and sexuality, visual art and performance, and cultural history. He also teaches and writes about popular and unpopular culture, queer subcultures and aesthetics, music, psychoanalysis and critical theory. He is the on the editorial board of Contemporary Theatre Review and on the editorial collectives of Social Text and Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Prof. Nyong’o is also the author of The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance and the Ruses of Memory (2009).

Thursday, April 12, 2012

4:00 PM

Room 1440, Schoenberg Music Building