Talk by Professor Sean F. Edgecomb

Monday, September 23, 2019 at 6:00pm
Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown

FREE!

"Sequel as Revolution: Taylor Mac's Queer Time," a talk by Sean F. Edgecomb, Assistant Professor of Drama at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, who is currently co-editing a volume on the work of Taylor Mac with David Roman.

For almost twenty years, Taylor Mac has reformed queer performance in the United States, proudly unfurling the banner “the revolution will not be masculinized.” This lecture critically considers Mac's magnum opus, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” among other works, to illustrate how Mac redefines the notion of the sequel as a productive form for queer continuance and its analysis. Declaring that “all stories are sequels,” Mac consistently guides audiences to work against patriarchal notions of historicism, teleology, and linear temporality, demonstrating how queer alternatives may be imagined to promote art as revolutionary social action, and giving voice to the marginalized, who have not been the beneficiaries of normative cultural patterns. The malleable, immersive nature of Mac's work endows audiences with a broadly defined queer authority to assist in reforming not only homogenous and exclusive narratives of the past, but also the very work itself, spinning a limitless web of queer sequels and queer potential.

This event is part of Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities Monday Night Lecture Series.

Click here to read the pdf "Taylor Mac: Coming Together While Falling Apart - Unmaking/remaking American History" by Sean F. Edgecomb.

Taylor Mac performs the Connecticut premiere of the highly immersive and outrageously entertaining abridged version of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music highlighting various musical styles and artistic voices on Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 7:30pm in the CFA Theater.

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View or download a curricular guide with more information and links to articles and videos.

Photo by Kevin Yatarola.