“We weren’t different or better than people who clearly came here for the bathhouse or clubs, but we really came for the whole cultural experience of what Black Gay Pride was about,” says Raymond R. In the Life Atlanta (ITLA) was the first group to formalize the Labor Day celebrations into Black Gay Pride in 1996, by supplementing the weekend of partying with health workshops, poetry slams, panel discussions, and, occasionally, a march through Atlanta’s streets. Teague would learn McTerry’s picnic was one of many Black gay gatherings occurring across the city every Labor Day, and those parties created a 40-year legacy of Black queer folks from across the country flocking to Atlanta during the final weekend of summer. “I had never seen an outdoor event during the daylight in somebody’s backyard with this many Black gay men-it was astounding.” “They were so beautiful,” Teague breathlessly remembers. Witnessing such a gathering unlocked a new world for Teague. There were at least 200 immaculately attired attendees at McTerry’s barbecue that weekend. They wouldn’t let me wear the little picnic outfit I had on because I dressed like I was going to a damn picnic.” “When I came out of the bedroom and went into the living room, I asked them, Why are y’all dressed like y’all are going to church? and they said, What in the hell do you have on?” recalls Teague, who now serves as minister for the Abundant Love Unitarian Universalist Congregation in West End. Duncan Teague was feeling cute after primping for his debut in Atlanta’s Black gay social scene in August 1984, but the recent college graduate from Kansas soon learned he was underdressed for a backyard soiree hosted by Henri McTerry.
For more information about the master’s program, visit. New Formations of Cultural Studies marks the launch of a community-based Master of Arts in Cultural Studies at UW Bothell in Autumn 2008.
The series focuses on cross-methodological and translocal research projects designed to generate new scholarship on the multiple locations of cultural studies. These events, co-sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Hilen Endowment for American Literature and Culture and the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, are part of the 2007-2008 New Formations of Cultural Studies series, a project related to the ongoing work of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective. He is currently performing staged readings of Sweet Tea, and is working on an anthology of black queer performance texts and researching queer sexuality and performance in the black church. His one-man show, Strange Fruit, toured the United States between 19. In addition to his published work, Johnson is a performing artist. Henderson) Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (2005) and recently finished Sweet Tea: An Oral History of Black Gay Men in the South (2007). His first book, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003) won several national awards. Patrick Johnson is chair and director of graduate studies in the Department of Performance Studies, and professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University.
In this presentation, Johnson will answer the question of how performance, as an embodied research practice, may be used to document and interpret ethnographic encounters, drawing on his field research with black gay Southern men to argue that performance studies provides a critical lens for analyzing and documenting ethnographic research.īoth events are free and open to the public.Į. On the Seattle campus, Johnson will discuss Performance as Method: Ethnography, Cultural Studies, and Performance Praxis from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Their tales, collected in Johnson’s forthcoming book, Sweet Tea: An Oral History of Black Gay Men of the South, engage such topics as coming of age in the South, religion, sex, transgenderism, and coming out. Patrick Johnson, relates the stories of black gay men, ages 19 to 93, who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South. The UW Bothell’s Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program presents a performance of Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell the Tales at 6:30 p.m.