Unless noted otherwise, everything on this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Special Issue: Corporeal Migration and Performance
Edited by Myron M. Beasley and Anwar Uhuru
Introduction
[essay/pdf]
Becoming Epiphyte: Tree sitting, hypermingling, (para)sitism, and abolition
Ecologies
[essay/pdf]
Between Harlem and Me: Layered Time, Memory, and Corporeal Migration [essay/pdf]
Maria W. Stewart, Alive!: Politics, Place and Performance [essay/pdf]
"Look," ... Performing Black Nihilistic Hip-Hop Adulthood
[essay/pdf]
On The Mainline: The Fugitive Materiality of Photography and Black Corporeality [essay/pdf]
(Critical Acts: Migratuse Ataraxia)
Migratuse Ataraxia: Race, the Antebellum South and Critical Fabulation [essay/pdf]
Acts of Memory: Performance in Black Artmaking [esssay/pdf]
Sounds of Migratuse Ataraxia [audio essay/mp3]
There Was Love: A Response to Wideman Davis Dance's Migratuse Ataraxia [essay/pdf]
Torn [video and script]
Black Dance: A Collage of Embodied Language Systems
[essay/pdf]
<notes on contributors>
» Myron M. Beasley, Ph.D., teaches in the areas of American Studies and Women and Gender Studies at Bates College. He is also an international curator and cultural critic. He is the author of Performance, Art, and Politics in the African Diaspora (Routledge Press). His research explores the intersection of cultural politics, art, and social change. He has garnered distinguished awards and fellowships from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Davis Family Foundation, the Reed Foundation, and the Dorathea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. Most recently, he was awarded the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize. Website: myronbeasley.com
» Biba Bell is a dancer, choreographer, and writer based in Detroit. Her choreographic work, often set in unconventional venues, focuses on domesticity, labor, and architecture. Her current project investigates dance and arts activism as it intersects forest protection and conservation, dancing arboreal relations through the lens of what she theorizes as epiphytic choreographies. Bell's performance work has been presented internationally. She recently performed with Detroit Opera in John Cage's Europoeras 3 & 4, directed by Yuval Sharon, and Joan Jonas' Mirror Piece I & II at Museum of Modern Art. She self-published Modern Garage Movement (2005-2011) on the namesake performance collective of which she was a member. Bell earned her PhD in performance studies from New York University and is an Associate Professor of Dance at Wayne State Uni-versity. Of her dancing the New York Times writes, "It's invigorating to watch someone who borders on wild." Website: bibabell.com
» Winston Benons Jr. is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, scholar, and educator. He is trained in Afro-Cuban, Haitian, and Afro-Brazilian dance, with studies in Horton and Dunham techniques. He is the Founder and Director of tRúe Culture & Arts, facilitating cultural exchanges, and experiential events that merge performance, education, and community engagement. Winston holds an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago, focusing on Theater and Performance Studies, Curation, and Visual Culture, a B.A. in Caribbean Dance and Pedagogy, and a Certificate in Higher Education Teaching. He has been adjunct faculty at Rutgers University, a guest lecturer at Pace University, and an educator and mainstage artistic director at Brooklyn Friends School. His artistic practice includes site-specific work (Conversations with Rothko), direction (What Lies Beneath), movement direction (Amahl and the Night Visitors), and a visual arts practice exploring identity, memory, and transformation through screendance and digital collage.
» Thaddeus Davis is Co-Director of Wideman Davis Dance and Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of South Carolina. His research, performance, creative, and community practices center on Southern Black experiences. He has received multiple honors and grants for his work, including the 2022 Mellon Monuments Grant, 2022 Alternate Roots: Partners in Action, 2022 and 2019 National Endowment for the Arts, 2024 and 2021 International Association of Blacks in Dance: COHI | MOVE Comprehensive Organizational Health Initiative, 2018 National Dance Project Grant, 2017 Provost Grant to support the creations of a research team for the development of Migratuse Ataraxia, 2013 Map Fund Grant to support the research and development of Ruptured Silence: Racist Signs and Symbol, Jerome Robins New Essential Works Grant (2011), University of South Carolina Arts Institute, Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Reading/Dance Collaboration, Balance: Homelessness Project (2009), Canvas: The Master Class (2010), Cultural Envoy to Portugal, U.S. State Department. Website: Wideman Davis Dance
» Gregory E. Doukas is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Arts & Humanities at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where he teaches philosophy, and a fellow at the Academy of Advanced African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. His forthcoming book, Dialectical Political Responsibility, focuses on the question of political responsibility in 21st-century global existentialism as well as the U.S. and Caribbean Black Radical Traditions. His second project, which is currently being written with a co-author, focuses on problematic interpretations of West African decolonial thought and envisions a version of African philosophy that embraces both modern and traditional knowledges. This project is tentatively titled How to Decolonize.
» Brian J. Evans is an Assistant Professor at Bates College in the Theater and Dance Department and the American Studies Program. As a multidisciplinary artist and educator, he explores performance as a space of suspension—between disciplines, identities, and histories—where connections are rediscovered and reimagined. His work engages the Arts as a catalyst for community, equity, and embodied knowledge, emphasizing courageous vulnerability as a means of fostering relationality. Committed to honoring those who paved the way, Evans views performance as both an expressive act and a practice of witnessing, remembering, and activating presence. In the 2025-2026 academic year, Evans will join the Dance Department at St. Olaf College. Website: brianjevans.org
» Devon R. Johnson, Ph.D., is a first-generation American of Jamaican ancestry currently serving as a Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tampa (FL, USA). He is also the author of a monograph, Nihilism and Antiblack Racism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Johnson's teaching, research, and writing focus on questions of Existentialism and Africana philosophy as they relate to phenomena of pessimism, nihilism, and anti-black racism in the everyday life of black people. His research combines interests in black nihilism with studies of black youth, hip-hop, and maturity, including investigations into what it means to develop as a strong, existentially mature, black adult in antiblack racist societies.
» Dianne Smith is a multidisciplinary artist whose career spans over two decades. She has been awarded numerous residencies and fellowships, including a New York State Council on the Arts grant, a Lunder Institute Fellowship, a Nancy Graves Foundation Award, and she is a Fulbright awardee from the U.S. Consulate General in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Her work is held in esteemed collections such as The National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Bronx Museum, The Brodsky Organization, and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art. Additionally, her papers are archived in the Barnard College Library Archives and Special Collections. Smith earned her MFA from Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany, through the University of Plymouth in the UK. She lives and works in Harlem, NY. Website: diannesmithart.com
» Tony Stoeri is a Minneapolis native who began working as an electrician and lighting designer at the age of sixteen. After graduating from Carleton College with a B.A. in history, Tony returned to the Twin Cities to work full-time as a freelance lighting designer with companies such as Walking Shadow Theater Company, Theatre Forever, Mu Performing Arts, Mission Theatre Company, and St. Paul's Young Artists Initiative. He is the production manager and light designer for MIGRATUSE ATARAXIA/Wideman Davis Dance.
» Anwar Uhuru is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Philosophy at Wayne State University. Their work is primarily concerned with social power regarding gender, class, sexuality, and ableism and how it intersects with state-based violence due to social hierarchy. Their research interests include Black Existentialism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer of Color Critique, Black Intellectual Thought, and Aesthetics. They have publications in the Journal of Hip Hop Studies, he Journal of Philosophy and Global AffairsT, APA Studies, Journal of World Philosophy, Philosophy Compass, and Radical Philosophy Review. Their forthcoming book, The Insurrectionist Case for Reparations: Race, Value and Ethics, will be published through SUNY Press.
» Ricky Weaver is an image-based Artist from Ypsilanti, MI. Her work investigates the indexical relationship between objects and images as a way of contemplating the potential fugitive materiality of the photograph and the body. Weaver's Ontological Framework is centered on ancestral veneration, ritual, and ceremony as a modality of creation or attunement as praxis that has the potential to bring forth new information through the aesthetic/causal plane. Weaver received her MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2018. She has been awarded opportunities such as The Independent Scholar Fellowship at The Carr Center Detroit and the University of Michigan Institute for Humanities Exhibition and Fellowship Award. Weaver has exhibited in the US and abroad at institutions such as Saatchi Gallery, ParisPhoto, and ExpoChicago. She is currently appointed as Assistant Professor at Penny W. Stamps College of Art and Design at The University of Michigan. Website: rickyweaver.com
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (issn: 1557-2935)
editor-in-chief: Michael LeVan (Vancouver, WA)
managing editor: Greg Langner (Antelope Valley College)
aftermaths editors: Mary Elizabeth Anderson & Richard Haley (San Jose State University)
the city editors: Patrick Duggan (University of Southampton) and Stuart Andrews (Brunel Univesity of London)
performance & pedagogy editor: Robert Gutierrez-Perez (California State University, San Marcos)
the performance wunderkammer editor: Christopher J. McRae (University of South Florida)
book review editor: Christopher J. McRae (University of South Florida)
banner image, "Uptown Parade," and issue image, "Harlem Ladies," by Dianne Smith