Single Review on past events

Abstract: 

Jacob Bloomfield investigates the extraordinary career of the musician Little Richard between 1955 and 1964. The talk explores a range of facets regarding Richard’s legacy through its examination of a central question: how the singer became one of the most successful figures in mid-twentieth-century popular music, achieving ground-breaking popularity with cross-racial audiences in the United States and Europe, while consciously predicating his persona on male effeminacy and the suggestion of same-sex desire. I argue that Richard’s status as an internationally popular icon provides historians with largely unacknowledged, unique insight into the intersections and assemblages of race, gender, sexuality, and consumption during a period defined by racial bigotry and pervasive repression of sexual and gender expression.He investigates the extraordinary career of the musician Little Richard between 1955 and 1964. The talk explores a range of facets regarding Richard’s legacy through its examination of a central question: how the singer became one of the most successful figures in mid-twentieth-century popular music, achieving ground-breaking popularity with cross-racial audiences in the United States and Europe, while consciously predicating his persona on male effeminacy and the suggestion of same-sex desire. I argue that Richard’s status as an internationally popular icon provides historians with largely unacknowledged, unique insight into the intersections and assemblages of race, gender, sexuality, and consumption during a period defined by racial bigotry and pervasive repression of sexual and gender expression.