Dr. Stephanie Leigh Batiste is Associate Professor of English, Black Studies, Theater and Dance, and Comparative Literature at University of California at Santa Barbara and Director of the Hemispheric South/s Research Initiative. Batiste’s award-winning book, Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression Era African American Performance (Duke University Press, 2011) focuses on the relationship between power and identity in black performance cultures to reimagine Black self-conception, national belonging, and modernism. She is co-editor of the NYU Press Book Series Performance and American Cultures. A poet, playwright, and actor. She has written three plays: Stacks of Obits, Young Love Found and Lost: Six Poems in a Circle, and Blue Gold & Butterflies. Her current research focuses on affect and feeling in relation to violence and death in Black millennial performance in Los Angeles. Her critical and creative writing can be found in Women and Performance, The Black Scholar, The Current, and Foundry.

VISIT WWW.ENGLISH.UCSB.EDU/PEOPLE/BATISTE-STEPHANIE

ENUMERATE

[a beating]

By STEPHANIE LEIGH BATISTE

the / kneeling / is / not / like prayer.