Department of English

Bessie Smith to Beyoncé: The Century of African American Women Performers
African American women performers from blues woman Bessie Smith to French cabaret star Josephine Baker, from jazz darling Billie Holiday to rock icon Tina Turner, from disco queens LaBelle to pop vocalist Whitney Houston, and from hip hop legend Lauryn Hill to millennial star Beyoncé, have constantly redefined and expanded American popular music. Using the long 20th century as our historical marker, this course will explore how African American women performers have consciously and sometimes contradictorily used new media technologies, blended musical genres, and defied the racial and sexual limits placed on them in American culture in order to assert their own narratives of artistic and political freedom.