annual report 2011 - Office for Research - Northwestern University

Lakhiyia Hicks, a School of Communication alumna and Harvey Young at the Regina Taylor Project, a theatre production at Northwestern.
Harvey Young
School of Communication
The Experience of Race
In 1901 George Ward was attacked, murdered, and
dismembered by a mob of white men, women, and children.
As this lynching victim’s lifeless body burned in a fire,
enterprising youth cut off his toes and, later, his fingers and
sold them as souvenirs. Ward’s grisly end is one of several
events that Harvey Young, theatre, chronicles in his book
Embodying Black Experience, an innovative and award-
winning study that uses biography, archival history, and
performance theory to relay the experiences of black men
and women who, like Ward, were profoundly affected by the
spectacular intrusion of racial violence into their lives.
Supported by a yearlong fellowship at Stanford’s Center for
Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity, Young’s book
recently won two major book-of-the-year awards: the
Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in
Interpretation and Performance Studies from the National
Communication Association and the Errol Hill Award for
Outstanding Scholarship in African American Performance
from the American Society for Theatre Research.
Young’s unique critical approach to reading American
history through the lens of performance studies has been
championed within a wide array of other disciplines:
American studies, communication studies, history, legal
studies, and theatre. Currently Young is completing
several book projects
that similarly use the
medium of performance
to interrogate US racial
history. With funding
from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation
and the National
Endowment for the
Humanities, he is
coauthoring an oral
history of black
theatre and dance
in Chicago. He is
also coediting
an anthology
of plays,
including
2011 Pulitzer
Prize winner
Clybourne Park by Northwestern
alumnus Bruce Norris, that engage the topic of
neighborhood integration. In addition, he is writing Theatre
and Race, a book that offers an accessible introduction to
representations of race in theatre history.
Excellence in Research | Annual Report 2011 55
Andrew Campbell