“Danc(ing) the Archive: Colored Bodies and the Afro-fabulation of Black Representation” May 15

Danc(ing) the Archive: Colored Bodies and the Afro-fabulation of Black Representation

Colorism as a concept was coined and first used by Alice Walker in her 1982 book "In Search of Our Mothers Gardens" to describe the unconscious hostility that exists between light-skinned and dark-skinned black women within the African-American community. She defines colorism as "the prejudicial and preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color." Colorism frequently intersects with gender, disproportionately affecting dark-skinned women as it is intrinsically linked to beauty standards. Academic research on colorism has revealed how the intertwined nature of skin tone, gender, and beauty standards influences social status, privilege, and everyday opportunities within society for dark-skinned women of color.

In this archival research, a fragment and the introductory chapter of Goriola's doctoral dissertation on "Colorism in Nigeria", she is excavating and documenting the perpetuation of colorism and the experiences and representation of dark-skinned female dancers in the U.S. Her work examines the dynamics of colorism and analyze the implicit and explicit sacrifices dark-skinned female dancers offer to comply with the industry standards to attain belonging. It also investigates how dark-skinned female dancers created radical strategies to combat this prejudice and create a voice and an alternative space for themselves. Her research will likely generate new perspectives and contribute to the knowledge of the effect of colorism on dark-skinned female dancers in the United States.

Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola is a multidisciplinary artist-scholar, an Edward A. Bouchet scholar, and a 4th-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Performance Studies. She is the author of An African Feminist Reading of Wole Soyinka(2024), published in The Republic Journal, and the co-author of Burna Boy, #EndSARS, and the Use of Restlessness(2024), published in The Black Scholar (TBS) Journal of Black Studies and Research. Olabanke’s writing and research explore the intricate intersections of Colorism, Dance, Performance, Media Representation, Black women’s labor, identity politics, and skin-bleaching practices. She explores the sacrifices dark-skinned Nigerian female performers make to attain cultural belonging and interrogates the media's role in perpetuating Euro-American beauty standards. Her work critically analyzes how societal pressures shape self-representation and embodiment and how identities and bodies become sites of negotiation and resistance.

Our discussant Dr. Grace D. Gipson is an assistant professor at the Department of African American Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Gipson is a Black future feminist/pop culture scholar whose research explores Black popular culture, digital humanities, representations of race and gender within comic books, Afrofuturism, and race and new media. Her current book project explores Black female identities as personified in comics and fandom culture. A second project examines how online Black female academic and popular networks produce cultural and technical capital, which act as safe spaces that showcase, interrogate, and celebrate the blending of popular culture and the academy. Dr Gipson is also an alum of the BMRC Summer Fellowship Program.

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