Performing Female Blackness: Modes of Engagement

Sponsored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Recorded on 07/19/2023
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 335

In the third episode of this four-part series, author of Performing Female Blackness Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae describes the modes of engagement she employs in her book, research, and creative works. A multidisciplinary artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Naila combines academic prose with artistic mediums—poetry, play excerpts, song compositions—to demonstrate their unique uses and strengths. As she explains, academic text allows for extensive citations, connections to fellow researchers, and the opportunity to flesh out theory; song, on the other hand, grants an efficiency in language and power in refrain or melody. In addition, Naila shares her hopes for how readers will interpret and relate to Performing Female Blackness. This episode also features a clip of Naila’s song “Free,” which is off her album Fire Woman and included in the book.

About the guest:

Naila Keleta-Mae
Associate Professor, Department of Communication Arts
University of Waterloo

Naila Keleta-Mae is a Dorothy Killam Fellow, the Tier 2 SSHRC Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender, and Performance, an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, a multidisciplinary artist, and the Principal Investigator of Black And Free.

Enjoy the conversation? Listen to the rest of the series:

• Defining Performance
• Blending the Artist and the Academic
• The Concept of Translucency and the Black & Free Project

Check out our previous series with Wilfrid Laurier University Press:
– Canadian Poetry Today
– Animal Studies, Postcolonial Literature, and Multispecies Modernity
– Unpacking the Personal Library
– Cultivating Indigenous Studies
– Michelle Porter and the Métis Way

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