Opacity, Narration, and “The Fathomless Word”

TAVIA NYONG’O is Chair and William Lampson Professor of Theater & Performance Studies; American Studies; African-American Studies; and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. His first book, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (2009), won the Errol Hill Award for the best book in Black theater and performance studies. His second book, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018), won the Barnard Hewitt Award for best book in theater and performance studies. He also writes for contemporary art and culture publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Texte zur Kunst, Cabinet, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, and the British Marshall Foundation. An editor-at-large for Social Text, he is also a coeditor of the Sexual Cultures book series at New York University Press.