Lily Mellitz ’26
Executive Arts Editor
Dr. Diana R. Paulin, the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Trinity College, recently sat down with the Tripod to discuss her involvement with “Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar with Lisa Thompson,” a performance lecture by acclaimed playwright and scholar Dr. Lisa B. Thompson. The conversation covered the significance of Thompson’s work, the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship and the broader impact of performance in academic spaces. Dr. Thompson, a celebrated Black feminist professor, author and playwright is renowned for her sharp examinations of race, gender and identity.
Paulin’s connection to Thompson goes back decades to their time as Ph.D. students at Stanford University in the 1990s. While Thompson studied in the Modern Thought and Literature program, Paulin pursued a doctorate in English, but both shared a passion for theater and performance studies. Over the years, Paulin has engaged deeply with Thompson’s work, from attending her play “Single Black Female” off-Broadway, incorporating her other play “The Mamalogues” into her “Black Women Writers” class at Trinity, and exploring her scholarship on plays like August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” into her other classes.
“When I heard about [Thompson’s] most recent play [“The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body”], both as it was evolving and after its premiere, I was so excited about the topic and its impact on audiences,” Paulin said. “Her play has won many awards and has received so much positive feedback because she represents voices and experiences that are often overlooked or marginalized, such as her important portrait of older Black women. She also serves as a model of how to integrate one’s creativity and scholarly concerns.”
As an academic working across English, American Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African American Studies, Paulin sees “Dancing on the Slash” as a work that resonates across disciplines. The performance lecture, which includes excerpts from Thompson’s play “The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body,” engages with critical issues in Black women’s mental health, disability studies and social justice.
“Students in my classes are from a variety of fields, including English, American Studies, Global Health, Woman, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African American literature,” Paulin explained. “My current project in Disability Studies overlaps with these fields as well and Black women’s mental health is an issue that emerges in most of these fields in some way. Often cultural producers/artists like Toni Morrison or Audre Lorde employ creative work, such as writing, performance, visual art, music, poetry, literary, curation, narrative, etcetera, as a form of healing not only for the producer of the work but also for the audiences. Performance allows for collaborative experience between the audience and performers that can generate productive conversation and new insights.”
Paulin emphasized the timeliness of Thompson’s work in light of the ongoing mental health crisis and the increasing attacks on marginalized voices in academia and the arts, including the silencing of voices and the erasure of histories. Although time, funding and logistics challenges prevented a full staging of the play at Trinity this semester, she hopes Thompson’s visit will lay the groundwork for a future performance on campus or in the local Hartford community.
“In the meantime, there are several concurrent courses, including but not limited to, Theater for Social Change, Black Women’s Mental Health, Black Women’s History, Black Inner Lives and my own course, on Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in which the Black woman’s body/agency and Black feminist approaches inform all three courses,” Paulin said. “They also bring together students from a range of fields, including psychology, neuroscience, literature, women/gender/sexuality studies, history, american studies and theater and dance.”
The concept of the “slash” identity — balancing multiple roles and disciplines — is central to Thompson’s work, and Paulin sees it as a crucial framework for understanding Black feminist scholarship.
“I believe Dr. Thompson provides a model for embracing the diversity of our identities and resisting reductive definitions. Her scholarship represented in and through performance is accessible and relatable to audiences and to those who read her work,” Paulin said. “I really appreciate her reminder that we are not defined by one aspect of our identity and that it is important to find those overlaps and intersections that we might overlook. Often, storytelling through staged enactments, like the excerpts we viewed during her performance-lecture, is one of the ways that others can gain insight to perspectives they have not considered, and to rethink some of the beliefs that they’ve carried.”
Paulin stressed the importance of events like this in challenging rigid academic norms. “The logistics of finding space for the performance, getting funding/institutional support for the event, and finding a time that would not conflict with other events was a challenge and started last semester,” Paulin said. “I did not anticipate my own health challenges that almost required me to cancel the event, but I was determined to see this through because I worry that this kind of work is losing its funding sources because of cuts to important organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. There is so much around Black women’s health that is already overlooked and under researched (such as Black women’s mental health, dementia in Black women and Black maternal health), so pieces [like “Dancing on the Slash”] can serve as vital reminders of the actual lives of those people who are impacted by policy cuts and the erasure of history.”
When asked what she hopes students and faculty took away from the performance lecture, Paulin emphasized the importance of passion and purpose. “Find a way to embed your compassions, ethics, and creativity in a life and career that sustains you,” she advised. “We continue to learn and grow as we age and we need to see/hear/preserve the voices and experiences of those who came before us and who have paved the way for us.”
As organizations and departments at Trinity College continue to foster discussions on race, gender and identity through interdisciplinary scholarship, “Dancing on the Slash” stands as a powerful testament to the role of performance in academia — challenging, enlightening and inspiring the next generation of scholars and artists.
[…] Diana R. Paulin Discusses Lisa B. Thompson’s Dancing on the Slash and Black Feminist Scholarship […]