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Abstract: This project analyzes the use of gesture and posture in Black Lives Matter protests staged between 2014 and 2017 to explore the performative potential of bodily enactments in contemporary racial justice activism. Through a focus on the feminist performance techniques of laying, kneeling, standing in protest environments, I address the ways in which the BLM movement was founded by and ... read morecontinues to grow through the leadership of female-identifying activists who counter the problematic narrative that masculine figures have historically dominated racial justice advocacy. I engage with embodied forms of performance grounded in femininity and female subjectivity to illustrate how this labor works to create space in highly-policed protest spaces, and that it exists as a means of practicing or imagining liberation for contemporary racial subjects in the United States. In synthesizing the work of scholars from feminist studies, critical race studies, and performance studies, this thesis considers the capacity for femininity to act as a potent tool for racial and gender liberation.
Thesis (M.A.)--Tufts University, 2018.
Submitted to the Dept. of Drama.
Advisor: Kareem Khubchandani.
Committee: Kareem Khubchandani, Heather Nathans, and Noe Montez.
Keywords: Performing arts, Theater, and Dance.read less
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