Afton Okwu - American Stories: Identity and Media
Afton has moved back home to Los Angeles to continue searching for the good in the overlooked. While awaiting responses for political and cultural journalism fellowships, she spends her time writing, cooking, and debating the pros and cons of a masters degree.
Area of Concentration Courses
English 174 - The Seventies
American Studied 110 - The Good Life
English 143N - Writing as a Social Practice--Race, Class, (Creative) Writing, & Difference
African American Studies 126 - African American Women's History
History 134A - The Age of the City: The Age of the City, 1825-1933
Thesis
"The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress": Race, Panic, and Gender Confusion on the Black Comic Stage
This thesis seeks to examine the rise and fall of the Black female impersonator as a subconscious strategy of American society to deal with anxieties surrounding race and gender. It is divided into three main sections; the first establishes comedy as a theoretical framework for parsing American anxieties; the second applies the comedic lens to the history of American entertainment, with a particular focus on blackface minstrels and female impersonators; the third chapter encounters Geraldine, the drag persona of comedian Flip Wilson, and examines the basis of her popularity as entrenched in Black folklore figures, the dandy and the trickster spirit, and the recursive power dynamics of white and Black perception. This project looks towards the disciplines of Black, gender, and performance studies, along with media theory and archival research, in order to better conceptualize the work of Black comedians in American identity and cultural formation — who’s laughing, and what’s at stake?
