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Daphne A. Brooks (Yale): “This Wretched Enchantment: George Gershwin, DuBose Hayward and the Invention of ‘Black’ Women’s Sound”

This lecture is free and open to the public.

Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University. She is the author of "Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910" (Duke UP, 2006), winner of The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR; Jeff Buckley's Grace (New York: Continuum, 2005) and Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University, Feb 2021).

Brooks has authored numerous articles on race, gender, performance and popular music culture. She is also the author of the liner notes for "The Complete Tammi Terrell" (Universal A&R, 2010) and "Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia" (Sony, 2011), each of which has won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing, and her liner notes essay for Prince's "Sign O' The Times" deluxe box set was published in fall of 2020. She is the co-founder and co-director of Yale University's Black Sound & the Archive Working Group, a 320 York Humanities Initiative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Pitchfork.com, and other press outlets.

Brooks is currently editing an anthology of essays forthcoming from Duke University Press and culled from Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign: Celebrating the Legacies of David Bowie and Prince, an international 3-day conference and concert which she curated.

This lecture is part of the Humanities Unbounded Lab "Black Music and the Soul of America" and is presented in association with the Department of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies.

Type: LECTURE/TALK