Events
Ahead of the Game with Arts & Letters: "Blackgirl Fairy Tales on the Musical Stage"
A different game plan for autumn weekends. You are invited to join in discussion with Notre Dame’s most engaging faculty on some of the most pressing and fascinating issues of our times. Each lecture and Q&A is presented on a home game Friday. Visit Ahead of the Game for a complete listing.
La Donna Forsgren, associate professor, Department of Film, Television, and Theatre
During the 1970s, feminists launched critical debates about the influence of fairy tales, positioning the promise of “happily ever after” within the larger cultural and political struggle for gender equality. Unfortunately, these studies and those that followed rarely considered fairy tales created by Black women or the socio-political meaning garnered from their works. Forsgren’s analysis of the Tony Award-winning Once on this Island (1990) and the less-studied but popular musicals The Liberation of Mother Goose (1973) and The Other Cinderella (1976) intervenes within these broader conversations, staking a claim to Blackgirl musical fairy tales as a site of transgressive possibility.
All lectures are free and open to the public. No tickets required.