Making Sweet Tea: Film Screening and Q & A with E. Patrick Johnson and John L. Jackson

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Performative Format

Abstract

Abstract:
This session features a screening of the documentary film, Making Sweet Tea, directed by John L. Jackson and Nora Gross, The film chronicles the journey of southern-born, black gay researcher and performer E. Patrick Johnson as he travels home to North Carolina to come to terms with his past, and to Georgia, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. to reconnect with several black gay men he interviewed for his book, Sweet Tea. Johnson transformed that book into several staged plays over the course of a decade, and the film combines footage from his past performances of the men with documentary moments from their lives a decade after the book's publication. The screening will be followed by a Q & A with Jackson and Johnson.

John L. Jackson, Jr., is the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Erica R Edwards, Yale University

Comments

• E. Patrick Johnson, Northwestern University

• John L. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania