Object Performance in the Black Atlantic

Paulette Richards is an independent researcher and puppet artist. Co-curator of the Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibit at the University of Connecticut’s Ballard Institute and Museum with Dr. John Bell, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, USA.

Winner of the Nancy Staub Publications Award 2024.

• Part 1: The African American Object Performance Complex 1. Introduction to the African American Object Performance Complex 2. Minkisi: Ritual Objects as Lines of Resistance 3. Mechanical Negroes 4. African American Story Cycles 5. The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Object Performance in African American Dance 6. Music is Our Mother Tongue: Object Performance in African American Music Part 2: African American Object Performance Overcoming Jim Crow 7. From Minstrelsy to Vaudeville: John W. Cooper Crafts an Entrée 8. Shadows Uplifted: African American Object Performance under Jim Crow 9. Creating Communities 10. Throwing Voice: African American Ventriloquists 11. In the Image of God: Puppet Ministry and Object Performance in the Black Church 12. Political Activism and African American Object Performance Part 3: Object Performance in African American Dramatic Presentations 13. African American Puppet Modernism: Alice Swann and the Wonderland Puppet Theatre 14. Staging Stories: African American Folktales and Puppet Theater 15. Object Performance in African American Visual Art 16. African Americans and Object Performance in American Theater 17. African American Puppet Film 18. African American Puppetry in Social Media 19. The Substance of Things Hoped for: Contemporary African American Puppet Theater