“PERHAPS EARTHA KITT IS THE INSTRUMENT…:” HOW A SUPERNOVA DEFIED STARDOM

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2021 - 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - ONLINE

Presented by Film and Media Studies.

In this talk, Philana Payton, a Scholar-Activist and a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, will consider the multiple ways Eartha Kitt commanded narrative ownership through her engagement with autobiography, as well as her performative practices.

In 1956, she published her first autobiography (of four) at the age of twenty-nine entitled Thursday’s Child. In it, she revealed how performance was not simply reserved for the stage and screen, but that it was the very essence that was Eartha Kitt. Her recognition of Eartha Kitt as an entity separate from her true self (later discussed as Eartha Mae), remains a consistent thread throughout her life and manifests itself in many unique ways. Overall, I consider how autobiography and performance function as the primary means through which Black women performers assert their right to opacity, discretion, and selective vulnerability.

This event is free and takes place on Zoom.