African American Artists Animate Dolls

Paulette Richards is conducting a Zoom presentation on doll artists Monday, February 1st from 12-1.pm EST

This presentation explores the work of three African American artists who maintained doll blogs and animated their dolls in short video narratives between 2010 and 2015. Although puppetry usually excludes dolls on the grounds that dolls are ostensibly for static display or private play while puppets are animated in performances before an audience, these videos are significant as instances of African American object performance. 

By focusing on adult women of color who not only collect, but also play with dolls, this analysis extends girlhood studies, which, as a sub-discipline of gender studies has approached doll play from historical, anthropological, and psychological perspectives (Bernstein 2011, Chin 1999, Forman-Brunell 2012). 

By considering YouTube as a platform where tens if not hundreds of thousands of girls and women produce, disseminate, and view visual narratives using dolls to represent myriad fictional worlds, this presentation also addresses a large body of work that film studies scholars have essentially ignored. 

Finally reviewing this body of work offers a model of how puppeteers can connect with audiences at a time when the future of live theater is uncertain.

Free and open to the public.  To Register:
https://emory.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dTWNMy38TmOnN6Lfxzlmhg

Contact email:  rhonda.patrick@emory.edub
(Rhonda Patrick)