| In this dissertation, I assert that the presence of Muslim identities in African American culture has long been an influential contributor to Black performance aesthetics in theatre. The primary goals of this dissertation are to demonstrate this influence on Black performance traditions and to critically examine how African identities were staged, represented and constructed as Muslim identities as a point of entry to promote dialogues and themes of heritage, pride, intercontinental solidarity, resistance and freedom. While I will use some observations from Islamic and Religious Studies, this project is primarily an intersection between Africana Studies, Theatre Studies and Performance Studies, grounded in the latter because my investigation does not explore sacred or faith-based performance, but rather political and cultural performance.;With performances of Blackness and Muslimness as the object of analysis, I examine the importance of these representations as examples of the historical pluralism of Black spirituality; and, evaluate the links between these representations, their sociopolitical environments and the evolving perceptions of Islam, Muslims and Africa by African American communities and artists. I depart from the thinking of Muslim identities as solely religious matters and instead consider how the performance of these identities are constructed in the ways that people of African descent made efforts to form race pride and to secure multi-national political identities and associations. What do such representations say about African American perceptions of Muslims, Islam, and Africa's role within the Islamic world? What insights can the continuing depiction of Islam and Muslims provide about the contributions that unchurched spiritual identities have made and continue to make to the social fabric of African American performance culture? To explore these questions, this project includes critical readings and analysis of Islamic Africanisms present in the aesthetics of Negro Spirituals, the 1828 speaking tour of the emancipated enslaved African, Ibrahima Abdur-Rahman, and W.E.B. Du Bois's 1913 pageant play The Star of Ethiopia. |
