More Ways to Do the Charleston: Music, Diaspora, and the Mood of Distance

Focuses on the career and music of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, a singer and nightclub owner who was one of the most prominent African American expatriates in interwar Paris, and what it means to think about Bricktop's legacy both as a nightclub hostess (who shaped a type of diasporic space) and as a singer who (unlike, say, Josephine Baker) never released a commercial album. Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, Institute for Research in the Humanities, and Department of English.