About the Lecture:
The African-American Harlem Renaissance writer and poet, Zora Neal Hurston stated once “black women are the mules of the earth.” One assertion is that black trans women are historically and theologically situated somewhere between Howard Thurman’s notion of “the disinherited” and Franz Fanon’s notion of “the wretched of the earth.” In a contemporary context, transgender, lesbian, bisexual and gay African-American men and women must overcome complex challenges to establish and secure welcoming and nourishing communities. While we may already be connected with multiple social groups, our membership in these groups is almost always conditional and tenuous. This constant marginalization sustains the community’s burdens of stigma, violence, housing insecurity, and HIV infection rates, which are estimated to be among the highest of any community in the U.S. One response to this marginalization has been the formation of self-sustaining social networks and cultural groups, such as the House | Ballroom scene, a Black/Latino LGBT artistic collective and intentional kinship system that has grown over the past 50 years with its roots stemming from the Harlem Renaissance.
This lecture will explore the history of the House | Ballroom community as a Black Trans-Womanist theological discourse, a freedom movement, and its spiritual formation responses to race, class, sexuality, and gender oppression. It will further examine the community’s ability to use the art of performance as a hermeneutics of the body and situate its history in mobilizing as a resistance to these oppressions and place it in conversation with other historical struggles.
About the Speaker:
Michael Roberson is an adjunct professor at The New School and Union Theological Seminary in New York City as well as a public health practitioner, advocate, activist, artist, curator and leader within the LGBTQ community. He is a resident senior scholar for the Center for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy as well as a member of the sound art collective ULTRA-red and a creative consultant for the FX series Pose.
Contact: Debbie Dada, debbie.dada@yale.edu