Performing and Media Arts Presentation Series (PMAPS) Colloquium with Assistant Professor Dotun Ayobade.
Dotun Ayobade is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He studies how embodied forms of popular culture shape the meaning of community, justice, and activism in late twentieth century West Africa. Ayobade’s forthcoming book Queens of Afrobeat: Women, Play, and the Unmaking of Fela Kuti’s Music Subculture tells the stories of the working-class women whose voices and dancing bodies redefined Afrobeat Music from the early 1970s onwards and gave potency to Fela’s popular activism. His writing has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Journal of African Literature Association, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Art Africa, Africa Today, as well as in edited book volumes and other public fora, including Africa is a Country.
The title of Professor Ayobade's talk is Ethnographies of Serious Play: Sensing the Ludic in a Women’s History of Afrobeat Music
Register in advance: bit.ly/pmaps23spring
Sponsored by the Department of Performing and Media Arts and the Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program
