Artists Live is a series of intimate dialogues which engage a diverse range of artists at different stages in their careers by examining their artistic practice and trajectory. The conversations explore a variety of topics as they reveal individual artist's stories.
Please join the Human Rights Lab for a poetry reading and Artists Live conversation featuring acclaimed poet and performing artist Staceyann Chin and professor Danielle Roper.
Cosponsored by Logan Center Community Arts and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. This event is backed by the Office of the Provost.
Staceyann Chin is the recipient of several awards, including the 2007 Power of the Voice Award from The Human Rights Campaign, the 2009 New York State Senate Award, and a 2017 LGBTQ Humanist Award. She unapologetically identifies as Caribbean and Black, an Asian and lesbian woman, and a resident of New York City.
A proud Jamaican National, Chin’s voice was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where she spoke candidly about her experiences growing up on the island and the dire consequences of her coming out there. She is widely known as co-writer and original performer in the Tony award-winning Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Chin is the author of a memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, and is currently touring MotherStruck, her fourth critically acclaimed solo theater piece, which chronicles her incredible experiences of motherhood. Her most recent publication, Crossfire: A Litany For Survival, is the first full-length collection of Chin’s poetry.
Danielle Roper (Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Latin American Literature, Romance Languages & Literature; Theater & Performance Studies; Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture) graduated with a PhD from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University in 2015, where she defended her dissertation, "Inca Drag Queens and Hemispheric Blackface: Contemporary Blackface and Drag performance from the Andes to Jamaica." Upon completing doctoral studies, she taught as a Core Curriculum Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at New York University.
Roper is from Kingston, Jamaica and has an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and BA in Hispanic Studies (cum laude) from Hamilton College. Her research on Performance Studies, Caribbean Queer and Feminist Studies, Race and Visual Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean has appeared in e-misférica, as well as in anthologies with University of the West Indies Press and with Palgrave Macmillan Press. Currently, she is preparing her book manuscript by expanding the scope of her dissertation.