Tavia Nyong’o

Assistant Professor of Performance Studies

New York University

721 Broadway, Room 606,

New York, NY 10003

Tel: (212) 998-1979 Fax: (212) 995-4571

E-mail: tavia.nyongo@nyu.edu

KENYA

2008

“Kenya’s Crisis” The Nation, January 28

“Did Somebody Say ‘Tribal Clashes’?” N+1, January 8

“Kenya’s Rigged Election” The Nation, January 3

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

2003— Assistant Professor, Performance Studies, New York University

EDUCATION

2003 Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University

1995 B.A. with Highest Honors, College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University; elected Phi Beta Kappa

BOOKS

2009 The Amalgamation Waltz: Antebellum Dreams of the Transcendence of Race. University of Minnesota Press.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Under review “I Feel Love: Disco and its Discontents” Criticism

2008 “Period Rush: Affective Transfers in Recent Queer Art and Performance” Theatre History Studies 28

“Do You Want Queer Theory or Do You Want the Truth? The Intersections of Punk and Queer” Radical History Review (Winter)

2007 “’I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer Assemblages, Lyrical Nostalgia, and the African Diaspora” Performance Research 12(3)

2005 “Punk’d Theory” Social Text 84/85.

“Passing as Politics: Framing Black Political Performance” Women and Performance 29.

“The Black First: Crispus Attucks and William Cooper Nell” Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2003.

2002 “Racial Kitsch and Black Performance” Yale Journal of Criticism 12(2): 371-191.

BOOK CHAPTERS

2008 “Hiawatha’s Black Atlantic Itineraries” in Meredith McGill, ed., The Traffic in Poems: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange (Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press)

REVIEWS AND ROUNDTABLES

2007 Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom by Daphne Brooks. Reviewed for Women and Performance.

Hybridity, or, The Cultural Logic of Globalization by Marwan Kraidy. Reviewed for American Quarterly.

Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer” by Kathryn Bond Stockton. Reviewed for GLQ.

Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture by Janell Hobson. Reviewed for International Journal of Communication.

2006 Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race, by Maureen Mahon; Rip it Up: The Black Experience in Rock ‘n’ Roll, edited by Kandia Crazy Horse; and Afropunk: The ‘Rock n Roll Nigger’ Experience, directed by James Spooner. Reviewed for TDR: The Drama Review 50(1).

2005 “Black Theater’s Closet Drama,” Theatre Journal 57(4).

“Queer TV: A Comment” GLQ 11.1: 103-105.

EDITED VOLUMES

2006 Co-editor with Jayna Brown, “Recall and Response: Black Women Performers and the Mapping of Memory,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16(1) Mar.

ENTRIES IN REFERENCE BOOKS

2005 “Queer Theory and Theater” in Evert Sprinchorn and Gabrielle Cody, eds. Grolier/Scholastic Encyclopedia of Modern Drama.

1999 “African-American History and Politics,” in Timothy Murphy, ed., Reader’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), 13-15.

SELECTED Awards, GRANTS and Fellowships

2005-06 Faculty Fellow, International Center for Advanced Study, New York University

2005 Grant Recipient, Curricular Development Challenge Fund, New York University
Grant Recipient, University Research Challenge Fund, New York University

2004 Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize, American Studies Association (honorable mention)

2004 Faculty Development Grant, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

2002 Mellon Seminar in Gender Studies, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

2001-02 Ford Foundation Minority Dissertation Fellowship

2001-02 Graduate Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University

2000 Research Fellow, Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University

1998- 2001 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship,

1995-1996 Marshall Scholarship, University of Birmingham

1994 Phi Beta Kappa

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS

INVITED PAPERS AND PRESENTATION

2007 “A Problem Like Obama: Race, Heritage, and Hybridity in America’s National Thing,” Faculty-Graduate Seminar of the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University, 7 November.

“Rip it Up: Excess and Ecstasy in Little Richard’s Sound,” Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University, Summer Institute, 27 June.

“Bodies in Dissent,” Black Performance Theory 2007, Northwestern University, 19 May

2006 “The Intersections of Punk and Queer,” Queer Theory Seminar at Stockholm University, 30 November.

“Minstrel Trouble.” Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program, Harvard University, 26 October.

“When Black Meets Queer,” Hofstra University Inaugural Queer Symposium, 11 October.

Invited Presenter, Black Performance Theory 2006: Crossroads in Global Performance Williams College, MA, 28-29 April.

Roundtable participant, “Creating the Archive: When Experience Becomes History,” Grey Art Gallery, NYU, 7 March.

Discussant, Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black Rocker (2005 Dir. Raymond Gayle), Charlotte, NC, 22 February.

2005 Roundtable participant, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 10 November.

Paper: “Jim Crow’s Music.” International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, 28 October.

Paper: “Rip it up: Punk, Black Music, and Queer Theory.” Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University, 12 October.

Keynote Roundtable, Becoming Uncomfortable Performance Studies International 11, 31 March.

Keynote Address, “Performing the Exception,” Visualizing Rituals: Critical Analysis of Art and Ritual Practice Graduate Conference, Cornell University, 5 March.

2004 Invited presenter, Black Performance Theory 2004: Contingent Geographies of Blackness, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 9-11 April.

2003 “Black Performance and the Abolitionist Interior,” Department of Theater, University of California, Los Angeles, 30 January.

“James McCune Smith’s Social Fictions,” Department of English, Indiana University, 6 February.

2002 “Recasting Sexuality in the History of Black Performance,” Department of History, University of Minnesota, 2 December.

“What was Amalgamation? The Case of William G. Allen and Mary King,” Whitney Humanities Center Yale University, January.

2001 “Intercourse across the Color Line in Antebellum America,” Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, February.

“The Rhetoric of Race-mixing,” College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University, January.

SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2007 “Promiscuous Assemblies of the Black Atlantic.” Plenary lecture, American Society for Theatre Research, 16 November.

“Little Richard’s New Orleans” Association for Theatre in Higher Education Annual Conference, 28 July.

2006 “Tunes from Anticolonial Blackness” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, 14^th November.

2005 “Why was Jim Crow called Jim Crow?” American Studies Assocation Annual Meeting, 4 November.

“Astral Glamour: Queer Theory Masquerading as Punk Rock,” 2005 Pop Conference Experience Music Project, Seattle, 15 April.

2004 “The Face of Sylvester” Sylvester: The Life and Work of a Musical Icon New York University, 9 October.

“Burn This Disco Out (In the Disco Heat)” Regarding Michael Jackson: Performing Racial, Gender, and Sexual Difference Center Stage Yale University, 24 September.

“The Abolitionist Interior” Annual Meeting of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Toronto, CA, 30 July.

“Until We Have Faces: Museums, Memory, and the Facial Surrogate” Memory, Haunting, Discourse/Discourse, Haunting, Memory Karlstad University, Sweden, 17-20 July.

“Concrete Men: Support for Amalgamation among Black Abolitionists?” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, 27 March.

2003 “The Black First: Crispus Attucks and William Cooper Nell” American Society for Theatre Research Annual Meeting, Durham, NC, 21 November 2003. And at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Hartford, CT, 17 October.

2000 “‘I, thank God, am with the Oppressed’: Mary and Frank Webb in the Antebellum Diaspora,” Diasporas Africaines dans l’Ancien et le Nouveau Monde: Conscience et Imaginaire, Equipe Diaspora (Etudes Africaines Américaines) de l’Institut d’Anglais Charles V, Université Paris 7—Denis Diderot, October.

1999 “Images of Topsy: Blackness and Femininity as Restored Behaviors,” Americanist Colloquium, Yale University, 24 September.

COURSES TAUGHT

The Black Atlantic

Black Performers in the Age of Jim Crow

Performing Race and Nation in the Nineteenth Century

The History of the Body

Punk Subcultures

Theorizing a History of Practices

Performance and Social Theory

Documenting Performance: Queering the Archive

PEER REVIEW

2005 Editorial Collective, Social Text

Article reviewer for Art Journal

Research grant proposal reviewer for PSC-CUNY Research Award, Grant in Performing Arts Scholarship

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

2008-10 Errol Hill Award Committee, American Society for Theatre Research

2007 Organizer, After CBGB: Gender, Sexuality, and the Future of Subcultures, international one-day conference held at NYU, April 13th

2006 Executive Committee, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University

Conference Program Committee, American Society for Theater Research

2005-06 Academic Affairs Committee, Tisch School of the Arts

Chair, Working Group on “Black Performance and Biopolitics,” Performance Studies International

2005 Organizer, “Outside/Inside/Beyond Jim Crow: The Strange Choreographies of Racial Segregation,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, 3-6 November

Curator, “Trading Twelves: New Directions in Black Performance Studies,” Performance Studies International 11, 31 March—2 April

Co-Chair, Seminar on “Blackness and Latinidad in the Americas,” Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 14-18 March

2004 Chair, Seminar on “Global Queer Tastes” at Annual Meeting of American Society for Theatre Research

Chair, roundtable discussion on Zimbabwe Countdown (Michael Raeburn, 2002), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY, 11 December

2001-2003 Graduate Fellow, Calhoun College, Yale University

2001-2002 Organized Queer Studies Reading Group, Yale University

2001 Organized Past Performances, a conference on the intersection of history and performance studies, held at the Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, 27 April, with a keynote address by Greg Dening

1998-2000 Co-organized Graduate/Faculty Research Colloquium in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale

UNIVERSITY AND DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE

2008-10 University Curricular Challenge Fund Committee, New York University

2006-07 Academic Affairs Committee, Tisch School of the Arts
Graduate admissions
5 Qualifying Exams
2 Dissertation Defenses

2005-06 Academic Affairs Committee, Tisch School of the Arts
Graduate Admissions
4 Qualifying Exams
5 Dissertations Defenses

2004-05 Graduate Admissions
2 Dissertation Defenses

2003-04 General Exams Reading List Review Committee
Graduate Admissions
2 Dissertation Defenses