by Celia Richardson

Students, staff and faculty members from the School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies discussed potential plans to integrate Black history education into the curriculum during a virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

“I was delighted by the activism, the commitment and the preparation,” TDPS Director Maura Keefe, said. “I left feeling very optimistic for the future.”

The town hall came as a student petition, calling on the school to make Black theatre and dance history into required courses, gained traction earlier this semester – garnering 374 signatures. 

Work on the petition began this summer after recent graduate Jasmine Mitchell took to Facebook to express her opinion that Black theatre history courses should be required for theatre majors. The post received support from others in the school, and a group of students created a group chat and began holding meetings.

“The accomplishments of Black people or BIPOC or marginalized communities tend to get overlooked. The reason why a lot of white accomplishments aren’t seen the same way is because you learn about them,”  Nana Edu, a recent dance graduate and contributor to the petition, said. For dance majors in TDPS, there is only one required history course, which Edu said does not pay much attention to Black and brown dance history. 

“The curriculum and what it is we choose to teach at a university is extremely important because these classes are shaping what we learn and how we choose to do our work,” Viola Costen, a junior theatre and dance major who helped write the petition, said. 

There are currently two Black theatre and performance classes, which count as elective credits but do not satisfy the history requirement for theatre majors. There are no Black dance history courses offered. 

Sophomore theatre and communications major, Kennedy Tolson, enjoyed taking Black theatre and performance, and said if it was required, “It would give everybody a better insight into Black stories and how Black people want to be represented.”

Instead of creating new requirements, faculty members discussed allowing Black history courses to fulfill existing history requirements. Though the details of these curriculum changes are still up in the air, Keefe said she felt hopeful that the school would come up with some courses that would satisfy history requirements for both theatre and dance majors. 

“Whether something is a requirement or becomes a possibility seems less important to me than if there is a course that teaches the content and if students want to take it,”  Keefe explained.

As for the original goal of the petition, to make Black theatre and dance history courses required, Keefe said it was “unlikely to happen,” adding that “decentering whiteness and centering Blackness are different things … there’s not just Black and white.”

Although Tolson said she understood why the school proposed this solution, she felt like the school was finding a way out of requiring Black history courses. Likewise, Edu said, “It doesn’t hold the same amount of weight when it’s an option versus a requirement. I don’t think that’s an appropriate response.”

Featured photo: The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is home to the School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. Photo by Celia Richardson.