Tina Post: Visiting Speaker at the Department of English

"Deadpan in/as Black Aesthetics"

Join the Department of English for a talk by Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature Tina Post (University of Chicago), "Deadpan in/as Black Aesthetics".

Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Post will discuss instances and meanings of deadpan—a vaudeville term meaning “dead face”—across literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life. Post argues that that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive. She will discuss how deadpan aesthetics function in and between opacity and fugitivity, minimalism and saturation, excess and insensibility.

Friday, February 3, 4:30-6pm
Leacock 232
McGill University

The event will be live streamed and live captioned.