11/21/24 Talk CANCELLED!! (Fellows Fall Speaker Series)

The BMRC invites you to the fourth session of the 2024 Fellows' Fall Speaker Series on Thursday, November 21 at 12:00 p.m. CT. “Danc(ing) the Archive: Colorism and Dark-skinned Female Dancers Representation in the Chicago Archives"

Our speaker, Olabanke Goriola, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Goriola is an interdisciplinary scholar, performer, researcher, trained dancer, hairstylist, and dance anthropologist from Nigeria. Goriola's research aims to identify and analyze the explicit and implicit sacrifices dark-skinned female performers offer to comply with industry standards and the dynamics of colorism manifesting in these standards. After spending an intensive month reviewing collections in BMRC repositories, she will share interesting findings and her ongoing research with us.

ABSTRACT: Colorism as a concept was coined and first used by Alice Walker in her 1982 book "In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens" to describe the unconscious hostility that exists between light-skinned and dark-skinned black women within the African American community. She defines colorism as "the prejudicial and preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color." Colorism frequently intersects with gender, disproportionately affecting dark-skinned women as it is intrinsically linked to beauty standards. Academic research on colorism has revealed how the intertwined nature of skin tone, gender, and beauty standards influence social status, privilege, and everyday opportunities within society for dark-skinned women of color. In this archival research, a fragment, and the introductory chapter of Goriola’s PhD dissertation on "Colorism in Nigeria", she seeks to excavate the perpetuation of colorism and the experiences and representation of dark-skinned female dancers in the U.S. Goriola's work examines the dynamics of colorism and analyze the implicit and explicit sacrifices dark-skinned female dancers offer to comply with the industry standards to attain belonging. She also investigates the various ways dark-skinned female dancers created radical strategies to combat this prejudice and create a voice and an alternative space for themselves. Goriola seeks to share new perspectives and contribute to the knowledge of the effect of colorism on dark-skinned female dancers in the United States.

Dr. Grace D. Gipson, a 2022 BMRC Fellow and an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, will serve as the discussant. Gipson is a Black future feminist/pop culture scholar whose research explores Black popular culture, digital humanities, representations of race and gender within comic books, Afrofuturism, and race and new media. Her current book project seeks to explore Black female identities as personified in comics and fandom culture.

JOIN US on 11/21/2024