The Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence is excited to invite you to "Rhapsody & Ruin: Porgy & Bess, Cultural Domination, and the Story of America", a talk by Daphne A. Brooks. Introduced and moderated by Brittnay Proctor, Assistant Professor of Race and Media at The New School.

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 (Durham, NC: 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, February 2021).

Liner Notes for the Revolution is the winner of eleven book awards and prizes including the Museum of African American History (MAAH) 2021 Stone Book Award, the 2022 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award and the 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. Brooks has authored numerous articles on race, gender, performance and popular music culture. She has written liner notes essays to accompany the recordings of Aretha Franklin, Tammi Terrell, Prince and Nina Simone. With Prof. Brian Kane, 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 and Pitchfork. 

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.