Kellen Hoxworth
Overlapping Africas on the African American Stage
Since 1990, African immigration to the United States has increased dramatically. In turn, African American theatremakers began staging new figurations of Africa and of Africans. From backward primitives to authentic ancestors, from political models to cautionary figures, from everyday heroes to the wretched of the earth: Africans have long served as both refracting lenses through—and foils against—which African American theatremakers and their audiences have perceived themselves. This presentation analyzes contemporary dramatizations of Africa as a key cultural site for the formation of African American identity and its political affiliations with Africa and the wider diaspora.
A scholar of African and Black diasporic theatre and performance, Kellen Hoxworth is the author of Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Northwestern University Press, 2024), and his work appears in publications such as American Quarterly, TDR, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Survey. His essay, “The Many Racial Effigies of Sara Baartman,” received the 2018 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies. He is working on his second monograph, Performing African on the African American Stage, and co-editing a special issue of TDR with Doug Jones entitled Blackface Geographies.