Embodied Avatars

How black women have personified art,expression,identity, and freedom through performance

Winner, 2016 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, presented by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or culture

Winner, 2016 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, presented by the American Society for Theatre Research

Winner, 2016 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, presented by the American Society for Theatre Research

Tracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth to the twenty-first
century, Uri McMillan contends that black women artists practiced a purposeful self-
objectification, transforming themselves into art objects. In doing so, these artists raised
new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment.
McMilla