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Joshua Chambers-Letson

Joshua Chambers-Letson is associate professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of After the Party: Performance and Queer of Color Life (NYU Press, forthcoming July 2018) and A Race So Different: Law and Performance in Asian America (NYU Press, 2013 and winner of ATHE’s 2014 Outstanding Book Award). With Tavia Nyongo’o and Ann Pellegrini he is a series co-editor of the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press. He has published widely in the areas of performance theory, critical race theory, and queer of color critique, covering the work of artists that include Nao Bustamante, Danh Võ, Nina Simone, Tseng Kwong Chi, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alexandria Eregbu, Eiko, Tehching Hsieh, and Wafaa Bilal.

Hovering in the Impasse: Reza Abdoh and the Uses of Blackness

From the coffle and the auction block to the whipping post, the lynching tree, or nightly news looping the moving images of Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, or Stephon Clark approaching death, the United States is consumed by consuming the scene of antiblack violence. Performance studies scholar Joshua Chambers-Letson argues that, as race, class, gender, and sexuality radically shape a viewer’s perspective on and experience of the world, the question of who is watching such violence and what they see is of critical importance. It is this question that hangs in the air for Chambers-Letson as he discusses the work of theater, performance, and film artist Reza Abdoh, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1995.