the young people's professor

I first met Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. three years ago at the "admitted students" weekend at Northwestern, where he served as a my PhD "buddy" for the weekend. Since then he's become one of my closest intellectual comrades and young mentors.

Jeffrey is currently the postdoctoral fellow in the University of Rochester’s Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies. He completed the Ph.D program in Performance Studies at Northwestern University in August 2006, where he focused on gender performance and issues of race and sexuality. He also holds a Masters Degree in Communication Studies (Rhetoric and Culture) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as well as a Bachelors Degree in Speech/Theatre and Secondary Education from Cornell College.

Presently, Jeffrey is turning his dissertation into a book, tentatively entitled, Trapped by the Closet: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Sexual Passing. This manuscript maps the evolution of the “Down Low” (DL)—men who practice same-sex desire discreetly and traditionally identify as “straight,” while having sex with other men. It is an ethnographic and media-centered exploration, which addresses the layered complexities of the representation of DL men and their lived experiences.

Trapped by the Closet advances the idea that media and the larger public's preoccupation with the closet as a universal concept, misunderstands the role of the DL in black constructions of sexuality. As a discourse focused on the dark, demonizing closet-structure, he argues this discourse misses an opportunity to discuss the complicated relationship between black masculine ideals and queer sexuality. Jeffrey has several publications, in print and forthcoming, which generally explore issues of race, gender, and sexuality. In addition to his more traditional academic pursuits, he is an actor, playwright, poet, and public speaker. In fact, he is working on a play which re-visits notions of the “racist south” in the mid-twentieth century, based on his grandmother’s experience in rural Mississippi.

This year at Rochester, he taught "Black Masculinities" (fall) and a seminar entitled “Black Sexual Politics” (spring). In fall 2007, he will join the faculty in University of Maryland-College Park's Women's Studies and American Studies Departments (congrats!!). There, he will complete his book manuscript based on his dissertation, continue work on a cultural studies project examining Black Female Impersonations, and venture into a rigorous ethnographic book project exploring issues of Queer Homelessness.

Here's a clip from Jeffrey and I in casual conversation:

Frank: "So Jeffrey, what is performance studies?"

Jeffrey: Performance Studies, as you know, is always contested terrain. However, I like to think of how Performance Studies works for me (I try to think about religion this way, as well). For me, performance studies, allows me to gain insights into the world by way of using theatrical metaphors, while also bringing consciousness to how different beliefs about race, gender, class and sexuality get played out (double entendre intended). For me, performance studies at its best, takes us beyond the page and recognizes the dialectical relationship between the page (text) and the stage (both actual and in everyday life). PS, I like that, works particularly in conversations about blackness—as actual performance is central to our culture. Performance Studies also illuminates how visual/aural/oral/social performance is integral to how “others” understand black folk and how we understand ourselves. At the end of the day, being bound to text alone can inhibit what we learn about cultural phenomena—there is always a richer lesson when also exploring the extratextual. At the end of the day, PS works for me because unlike other fields, it takes flux and contradiction as givens rather than surprises. Therefore, when folks start talking about the idea of “Black people,” performance scholars already know we are not just talking about some monolithic, flat, flavorless collective. As the wonderful Dwight McBride would say paraphrasing Walt Whitman, “we are large, we contain multitudes.”

Frank: "what would you say is performance studies’ relationship to African American and African Diaspora Studies? What unique methodological approach to you see performance studies offering to these fields? How would you situate your work within these overlapping contexts?"

Jeffrey: I guess I kind of answered that somewhat indirectly in the first question. However, I guess I’ll state this for those potential performance studiers out there. I have seen so many colleagues fall in love with performance as both theory and method, as they attempt to make sense of area in the world where actual ritual performances play out everyday life tensions (wars, unrest, injustices, etc). Whereas, before they may have tried to do the classic ethnographer “distant-observer” thing, now they were in the trenches. Performance Studies, as an involved and reflexive engagement, conjures so many new discoveries, revelations, and knowledges about the self and those whom you may “study,” so to speak. I think for those of us who do African/African-American Studies, we have benefited greatly from the changing landscape of academia, by way of the PS’s somewhat vogue status. Indeed, this new addition to the cultural studies project has a lot to offer academia and the world.

Category: What is Performance Studies?

The "what is performance studies?" series is intended as an online resource for scholars, popular audiences, and newcomers to the field.

Posted by the young people's professor on 3/25/2007 at 1:56:00 PM | Permalink