TOMORROW: Earl Brooks on the Rhetoric of Mahalia Jackson

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 13:12:33 -0500

On Wendesday, Nov. 17 at noon, Dr. Earl Brooks will discuss the rhetoric of gospel music legend Mahalia Jackson as part of the Dresher Center's series CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now. Dr. Brooks' presentation will follow a presentation by Kelley Bell (Visual Arts) about working with a master automata artist in England.

You can watch the presentations on Webex at this link.

Move On Up a Little Higher: The Rhetoric of Mahalia Jackson

Earl Brooks, Assistant Professor, English; Dresher Center Summer 2020 Faculty Fellow

Mahalia Jackson’s mastery of the gospel sound became a critical element of the Black freedom struggle. This book chapter from his upcoming book, Black Sonority: Rhetoric and Black Music, frames Jackson as a rhetorician par excellence while exploring the larger role of gospel music in public discourse. Brooks argues Jackson’s unique sound became an ideological and religious site of consensus, as well as a sonic commonplace between various strands of black music.

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