Camp Revival: Queering Gender and Sexuality in the Black Church

In this lecture Johnson engages the discourse on camp that posits it as a "white gay male" aesthetic; demonstrates how performance rituals within the black church such as spirit possession, gospel music, black church vernacular, dress, and preaching are imbued with the theatrical excess associated with camp; and, suggests that camp facilitates the transgression of hegemonic and prescribed gender and sexual identity in a place where such expression is taboo and at least on the surface, policed
E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University.
A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Johnson's work has greatly impacted African American Studies, Performance Studies, and Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
He is the author of several books, including Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003); Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South-An Oral History (2008); Black. Queer. Southern. Women.-An Oral History (2018); Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to a number of edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays.