Black Artists on a World Stage

FAIN: FA-53201-07

Penny Marie Von Eschen
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)

"Soul Call" explores the transnational and cross-genre artistic collaborations of a generation of black artists including choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham, jazz composer and band leader Duke Ellington, and writer Langston Hughes. Drawing on Michael Warner’s Public and Counter Publics, I argue that the generative performances of these artists helped call into being a new public culture of modernity over decades of the circulation of their art through multiple venues and various shifting industries, from clubs through Hollywood films and shorts. Exploring the transnational as well as cross-genre collaborations of these artists offers another way of imagining interdisciplinary work at an earlier stage.