FGSS graduate field faculty member Carole Boyce-Davies, a featured speaker for the Black Artist Talk event and professor of Africana Studies and Literatures in English at Cornell University, explains that twerking traditionally served a specific purpose.
“(It’s now on) Tik Tok and all the various social media, Instagram and so on and it’s something that people are doing in a flagrant way to use their sexuality and their body without realizing that historically, many of these dance patterns had a very specific meaning, Whether they were fertility dances or dances for agricultural purposes (or other) reasons, just shaking the body was not part of the intent.”
