The question of control for Black women is a costly one. From 1986 onwards, the trajectory of Janet Jackson's career can be summed up in her desire for control. Control for Janet was never simply just about her desire for economic and creative control over her career but was, rather, an existential question about the desire to control and be in control over her bodily integrity as a Black woman.

This book examines Janet's continuation of her quest for control as heard in her sixth album, The Velvet Rope. Engaging with the album, the promotion, the tour, and its accompanying music videos, this study unpacks how Janet uses Black cultural production as an emancipatory act of self-creation that allows her to reconcile with and, potentially, heal from trauma, pain, and feelings of alienation. The Velvet Rope's arc moves audiences to imagine the possibility of what emancipation from oppression--from sexual, to internal, to societal--could look like for the singer and for others. The sexually charged content and themes of abuse, including self-harm and domestic violence, were dismissed as “selling points” for Janet at the time of its release. The album stands out as a revelatory expression of emotional vulnerability by the singer, one that many other artists have followed in the 20-plus years since its release.

Table of contents
Track Listing
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. A Special Need
2. Like the Blues Need the Pain
3. Damn, Disconnected
4. Mmm … My Lips Hurt
5. Work in Progress
6. Let Me Just Fuck With it For a Minute
7. Welcome to My World
Notes

March 11th, 2020 7:30PM

In dialogue with Hammer Projects: Ja’Tovia Gary, which features THE GIVERNY SUITE, this screening of short films situates Gary’s work in the context of Black women’s experimental films across a 25-year period. By gathering video, photos, sound clips, and printed media, these filmmakers give an account of what gendered blackness feels like in North America and the UK. Artist and scholar Ayanna Dozier joins Gary for a post-screening discussion and Q&A.

February 18th, 2020 7:00PM

Part of Film series Happy Birthday, Toni! A Celebration of Black Women
Programmer: Ayanna Dozier

“The pursuit of vulnerability—the effort to remain open to at-risk bodies while possessing an at-risk body—is always marked by the certainty of death from exposure. And yet, it is a line of pursuit that we, as Black women, must maintain. What my interest in Ms. Morrison and Ms. Lorde’s words aims to examine is their very determined pursuits towards emotional and spiritual vulnerability as Black women in a world that reaps profit from the neglect, harm, and death of their at-risk bodies.”—Ayanna Dozier

February 29th, 2020 12:30PM

For the upcoming exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, teaching fellow Ayanna Dozier will discuss artists associated with Mexican muralism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the New Deal’s art programs. The conversation will illuminate how artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and others engaged the momentous cultural and political changes of their time. Focusing on this historical period, the talk will consider art’s social potential when it becomes public and collective.

“This is the death of painting!” It is rumored that Willem de Kooning pronounced these words in 1962 upon seeing Andy Warhol’s canvases depicting Coca-Cola bottles. In this lecture, teaching fellow Ayanna Dozier will explore the art of the 1960s and early 1970s, a time of creative crisis for de Kooning and other artists associated with Abstract Expressionism. As the slick, representational Pop art epitomized by Warhol gained wider recognition, a new concern with interpersonal dynamics and emotion came to the fore in the work of abstract artists. The talk will trace this social dimension in the work of veteran figures such as de Kooning and Mark Rothko and also consider innovations introduced by a rising generation of abstract painters, including Joan Mitchell and Ed Clark.

This single-session course offers an in-depth look at the intersections of jazz history and visual art. Using the exhibition Jason Moran as a point of departure, this course examines how Moran’s conceptual art practice, musical performances, and cross-discipline collaborations materialize the sonic and cultural tensions that define jazz. Paying close attention to the historical continuum of black musical production—from the Reconstruction period to the present—this session explores how contemporary artists preserve, complicate and grow this legacy.

June 22nd, 2019 7:00PM

Evening Hours presents Softest: an evening featuring Soft Waves, a photo installation with a 1930s DuArt permanent wave/ing machine and a performance lecture entitled Spoken Softly: What Feminists Can Learn From Men’s Rights (ASMR Style). Please join us Saturday, June 22 from 7-9pm.