Register at: https://buffalo.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEldOuupjguHtPSal6kgVDFrTW_2CAbnWZi.

The presentation revolves around Mario LaMothe’s ethnographic collaboration with queer Haitians and queer Haitian performance scholars who journey with their interlocutors through socio-politically charged endeavors. Teasing out the struggle, discomfort, and benefits that emerge from documenting activist responses to the national policing of same-sex desire, LaMothe previews how embodied and artistic testimonials are affective and regenerative only if their makers and chroniclers are not only committed but are also humbly yet dynamically co-present. This method is his self-imposed imperative that extends the temporality of the ethnographic research and which, Dwight Conquergood and D. Soyini Madison term “co-performative witnessing.” LaMothe illuminates how the concept is also applicable to non-researchers such as queer Haitian photographer Josué Azor who pools his resources, knowledge, and abilities with his allies to re-imagine Haitian embodiment and activate of spaces of liberation that stretch themselves and Haitianness beyond social, cultural, and political barriers.

Bio: Mario LaMothe is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Black Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is also a faculty affiliate in Gender and Women’s Studies, and Museum and Exhibition Studies. His research focuses on embodied pedagogies of Haitian arts and expressive cultures, and the intersections of queer lifeworlds and social justice in the Caribbean. Mario is the co-convener of Afro-Feminist Performance Routes, a biennial focused residency celebrating the dance artistry of African and African diasporic women. His work has appeared in e-mesferica, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Women and Performance, the Journal of Haitian Studies, The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, and Duke University Press’ co-edited volume Time Signatures: Race and Performance after Repetition. He is also a performance artist and LGBTQI rights advocate.

Co-sponsored by the Melodia E. Jones Chair of French and the College of Arts and Sciences Black Histories Month.