In Living Color: Performing the Black '90s

3 units

From Cross Colours overalls to oversized sweatshirts and boom boxes, the 1990s was loud, colorful, and in your face. But along with the fun of house parties and the growing prominence of hip-hop, Black people in the United States also contended with heightened criminalization and poverty codified through the War on Drugs, welfare reform, police brutality, and divestment from public education. In the midst of insurgency, creativity, and the quiet that undergirded both, we will study the various cultural productions of Black performers and consumers as they navigated the social and political landscapes of the 1990s. Focusing primarily on urban centers, we will study major works growing out of hip-hop, R&B, comedy, television shows, films, and popular literature that attends to the regional differences throughout the nation. In this course, we will use theories from performance and cultural studies to understand the specificities of Blackness, gender, sexuality, religion, and geography in the 1990s.