Like her University of Chicago Laboratory Schoolmate Paul Butterfield, Jefferson was born in Chicago. ‘Negroland’ is Jefferson’s name for that small, privileged segment of black American society alternately known as the ‘colored aristocracy’, the ‘black bourgeoisie’, and ‘Our Kind of People’. The conundrums of race and gender identity in America are at the core of Jefferson’s memoir, Negroland. It was the day, about halfway through the semester, when co-teachers Elizabeth Kendall (author of feminist studies of early modern dance and ’30s-era screwball comedies, among other books) and Pulitzer-prize winning critic Margo Jefferson demonstrated the cakewalk, a dance developed in the 19th century by southern slaves and later picked up at the turn of the 20th by white people who, without realizing it, were in fact imitating black parodies of their tight-assed selves. One of my fondest memories from the New School for Social Research Liberal Studies MA program comes from a course titled ‘Representations of Race and Gender in American Culture’.
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