African-American women, from colonial times through the early nineteenth century, found ways to make bold choices within the confines of their situations. Why don’t we know more of their names? What are their stories? To recuperate the lost lives of these eloquent, inspirational, and heroic women, we must dig deep, because too often they only remain as traces left in the records written by others. In order to conjure their genuine voices, to embody their actual experiences, we need to value imagination as much as evidence, in order to begin creating an American history that embraces the whole of history.
Valerie Joyce is an Associate Professor in Villanova’s Theatre Department with a PhD in Theatre History and Performance Studies from University of Maryland. She has published and presented her research, which cuts across race, genre, and historical period, centering on cultural constructs of gender and the theatre’s role in shaping American womanhood, in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences internationally. Her current book project examines African-American women before Emancipation through her play, I Will Speak for Myself, which mixes performance texts and primary historical artifacts to illuminate African American women’s lost experiences from the Colonial period through the Civil War.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at [ Ссылка ]
