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Kellen Hoxworth

@kellenhoxworth.bsky.social
1.4K followers 762 following 113 posts

Associate Prof. of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University at Buffalo. Transoceanic Blackface: nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810147… “Blackface Geographies”: doi.org/10.1017/S1054204325101172

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Reposted by Kellen Hoxworth
Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 23h
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Dick Zoutman @dickzoutman.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
VERY important paper! This study detected SARS-CoV-2 in the air of common areas of 4 big US airports. SARS-CoV-2 detected in 98% of samples through the year. Influenza A was found during flu season. That’s why you want to wear an N95 respirator in an airport! And all indoor public spaces all year!
journals.plos.org
Multimodal genomic surveillance for respiratory pathogens at four U.S. international airports: A comparison of air, wastewater, clinical, and national surveillance data
Early detection of outbreaks and emerging pathogens is critical for public health and global biosecurity. Airports, as major international travel hubs with dense, enclosed populations, are high-risk s...
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Looking for Langston, indeed.
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Happy to announce that my new essay “Intertheatrical Things” is out in the book “Theatre Things”!
The cover of “Theatre Things: Material Theories & Histories,” edited by Andrew Friedman and Eero LaineThe first page of “Intertheatrical Things” by Kellen Hoxworth
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Radicchiohead
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
“The Invented Choreographies of the Tomahawk Chop” by Kellen Hoxworth

A bass drum begins a slow, constant rhythm. The brass layer a recurring melody.
Suddenly, tens of thousands of fans throughout the stadium add their voices to the cacophony, belting the "war chant" of the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles while performing a simple, repeated physical gesture of a chopping motion. Holding their right arms forward perpendicular to their chests, they swing their forearms through the air with their hands held in flat vertical lines that mimic axe blades. This is the Tomahawk Chop, a ubiquitous feature of athletic compe-
titions at FSU that has spread throughout US sports, specifically among fans of teams featuring mascots based in stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. Through its easily repeatable actions, the Chop choreographs an "invented tradition" of
regional and national belonging while silencing Indigenous protests.

The Tomahawk Chop has become a popular ritual for US sports fans, with its
chant and its minimalistic choreography thoroughly woven into the fabric of US sports and popular culture. Attesting to its permeation of US popular culture, in 2003, hip hop artists P. Diddy, Nelly, and Murphy Lee released the song "Shake Ya Tailfeather" which sampled the Tomahawk Chop war chant in its chorus. Most recently, during the 2020, 2021, and 2023 NFL Super Bowl championship games featuring the Kansas City Chiefs and the 2021 MLB World Series featuring the Atlanta Braves, spectators reveled in raucous performances of the Chop that were broadcast to over 100 million households across the United States.

Despite (or because of) its ubiquity, the Chop is often framed as a cherished tradition vital to fans' communal identities: as a former student at FSU asserted in its defense during a class discussion, "It's just something we do." I responded to this student by sharing my own experiences as a white Canadian-American settler who grew up in Kansas City…
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Humbled to receive an Honorable Mention for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2026 Outstanding Article Award for my essay “Alice Childress’s Troubling Method: Theatrical ‘Truth’ and the Cold War Politics of Rehearsing Racial Authenticity.” www.athe.org/page/article...
athe.org
ATHE 2026 Outstanding Article Awardees - Association for Theatre in Higher Education
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
My new essay is out in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre’s special issue on “100 Years of Du Bois.” It’s open-access, so you can read it here:
thesegalcenter.org
An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision
Kellen Hoxworth
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
the best part of post-tenure academia has been having the career space to slow down. the damage done by the contraction of tenure track positions + poor security/working conditions of non tenure track faculty + quantification of academic contributions is incalculable
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
This special section runs alongside Camille Owens's review of "Transoceanic Blackface," which shares a review essay with Chinua Thelwell's "Exporting Jim Crow," Bethany Hughes's "Redface," and Danielle Roper's "Hemispheric Blackface."
doi.org
Reorienting Blackface | TDR | Cambridge Core
Reorienting Blackface - Volume 70 Issue 1
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The new issue of TDR is out now, featuring the special section I co-edited with Doug Jones on "Blackface Geographies":
doi.org
Blackface Geographies | TDR | Cambridge Core
Blackface Geographies - Volume 70 Issue 1
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
I wrote a whole essay, and he just…skeeted it out.
doi.org
Strains of the Enlightenment: Making Belief in American Secularism and African Difference in The Book of Mormon | Modern Drama
This article argues that the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, best known for its parody of Mormon religious beliefs, uses what Sara Ahmed terms “affective economies” to paradoxically remake A...
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Mr. Buddy @alexfirer.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
People are nervous about watching video, but this one is not of the murder, it's of the lead up, and people need to see it before the spin takes over.
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Reposted by Kellen Hoxworth
marissa walmart dog @meo.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
these are the 7 house democrats who voted to give ICE another $10 billion on thursday btw
Henry Cuellar (Texas), Tom Suozzi (New York), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), and Don Davis (North Carolina)
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Check out my interview with Dr. Miranda Melcher at the New Books Network about my book Transoceanic Blackface!
newbooksnetwork.com
Kellen Hoxworth, "Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance" (Northwestern UP, 2024) - New Books Network
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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
The "English Departments don't teach enough Shakespeare" wing of the Republican party has been overwhelmed by the "universities shouldn't exist" wing.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...
dailynous.com
Texas A&M Bans Plato - Daily Nous
Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That's a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy a...
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
nupress.northwestern.edu
Transoceanic Blackface - Northwestern University Press
A sweeping history of racialized performance across the Anglophone imperial world from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century A material history of ra...
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
Brian Robert’s reviewed Transoceanic Blackface in the Journal of American History, where he observes: “Hoxworth argues, convincingly, that blackface served both as pedagogy for understanding social relations of imperialism and as part of the ‘furniture’ of empire.”
“Hoxworth argues, convincingly, that blackface served both as pedagogy for understanding social relations of imperialism and as part of the ‘furniture’ of empire. Its lessons, coded in plantation melodies, earthy dialect, and grotesque caricatures of ethnic otherness, offered theatrical evidence that colonized nonwhites were inferior, incapable of self-government, and happiest when subjugated. Blackface provided familiarity, a kind of racist safe space in the tense world of empire building.”
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
My book Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance is available from Northwestern University Press. It maps the global history of blackface, minstrelsy, and related forms of racialized performance such as brownface and yellowface.
nupress.northwestern.edu
Transoceanic Blackface - Northwestern University Press
A sweeping history of racialized performance across the Anglophone imperial world from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century A material history of ra...
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
morbidly sociologically curious about whether there's a relationship between this and the clustering of right wingers on Truth Social + exodus of libs and the left from Twitter, etc
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Still waiting for the day my book is not relevant to today’s news stories:
nupress.northwestern.edu
Transoceanic Blackface - Northwestern University Press
A sweeping history of racialized performance across the Anglophone imperial world from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century A material history of ra...
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
bostonreview.net
How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Trump has signed an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation.
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
We said goodbye to our 10 year-old puppy Nova this week. He was our close companion ever since we rescued him when he was six months old. Across multiple moves (one cross-country) and major life events, he never left our sides. He was the best boy, and he will be missed.
An amazing companion — a tannish brown Shepherd mix rescue dog with an adorably long black snout that was starting to get large patches of grey.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
guys it's happening www.newsweek.com/groyper-char...
newsweek.com
What is a 'groyper? What to know about Nick Fuentes' alt-right movement
Fuentes' band of extremist followers take their name from the underbelly of internet meme culture.
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
Uhhhh… read my essay:
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE - Football Fantasies: Neoliberal Habitus, Racial Governmentality, and National Spectacle
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
I’m humbled and honored that the American Theatre and Drama Society has awarded my book Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance and Honorable Mention for the John W. Frick Book Award!
nupress.northwestern.edu
Transoceanic Blackface - Northwestern University Press
A sweeping history of racialized performance across the Anglophone imperial world from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century A material history of ra...
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Kellen Hoxworth @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
KOKO: Koko birkin bag. Practical Koko possession bag. RESEARCHER: No, Koko. You can’t have a Birkin bag. KOKO: Good Birkin good Koko give beautiful Koko deserve gorilla RESEARCHER: Koko, we simply can’t afford a Birkin bag. It is an unjustifiable expense. KOKO: jealousy professor
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Theatre Journal @theatrejournal.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
For your summer reading . . . TJ's June issue is out! Articles by Patrick McKelvey, Rebecca Chaleff, Shea Hwang, and Kellen Hoxworth speak collectively to the intricacies of minoritarian worldmaking. Print issue: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55030 Open access content: www.jhuptheatre.org/.../volume-7...
Cover image features Morris Frank and his companion Buddy preparing to cross the street in New York while a small crowd observes, ca 1930s, as part of a publicity campaign of The Seeing Eye, a US organization that systematized efforts to train guide dogs for the blind.
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