A Reading and Conversation with Katie Brewer Ball

Join the Department of Performance Studies we welcome PS Alum Katie Brewer Ball (Ph.D. '13) for a reading from their new book, The Only Way Out, followed by a conversation with Professor Karen Shimakawa. Katie Brewer Ball will be reading from the fourth chapter of the book, "This Face is Not for Us: Grounding Pleasure." This part of the book considers the erotics of escape as it is theorized in queer visual art works. 

In The Only Way Out, Katie Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerges as a story not of individuality but of collectivity and entanglement.

BIO:

Katie Brewer Ball is a writer living on Nonotuck land in Western Massachusetts. They are Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Theater Department at Wesleyan University, and affiliated faculty in the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program. Brewer Ball earned their PhD in Performance Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Their research and teaching interests include theater, visual culture, Black and Indigenous thought, feminist theory, queer studies, and psychoanalysis. Their first book, The Only Way Out: The Racial & Sexual Performance of Escape, examines contemporary literature, theater, and performance works that deal with narratives of escape. They are also working on a second book project on art and science on the North Slope of Alaska. Their writing has been published in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Artforum, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Criticism, RECAPS, Little Joe, Bomb Magazine, Dirty Looks, ASAP/Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, and by BOFFO and ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. In addition to teaching, Brewer Ball curates performance and art events, including the NYC performance salon, Adult Contemporary, and publishes creative nonfiction.