Dr. Leticia L. Ridley is an Assistant Professor of English and Drama at the University of Toronto. Her primary teaching and research areas include African American theatre and performance, Black feminisms, Black performance theory, sports and performance, and the intersections of Black digital studies and performance.
Leticia earned a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation (where she was a Predoctoral Fellow) and the Mellon-funded African American Digital Humanities program (AADHum). She has presented her scholarship at numerous conferences, including the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the American Society for Theatre Research, National Women’s Studies Association, and the American Studies Association.
Leticia has published scholarly essays in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, the August Wilson Journal, Routledge Anthology of Sports Plays, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity. Leticia is also the co-producer and co-host of Daughters of Lorraine, a Black feminist theatre podcast, which is supported by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and a recurring co-host on On Tap: A Theatre & Performance Studies Podcast. She is also a freelance dramaturg.
Leticia’s manuscript-in-progress employs a Black feminist methodology to examine contemporary Black women’s performance culture. Her book, divided into four chapters, archives and analyzes the performance repertoires that contemporary Black women popular artists and entertainers in the United States deploy to assert blackness as a space of freedom, possibility, and abundance: the visual art of Carrie Mae Weems, the Broadway musicals dedicated to the lives of Tina Turner and Donna Summer, the visual and sonic disruptions of athlete Serena Williams, and the technological performance praxis of musician Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. This study argues that contemporary Black women popular artists and entertainers serve as critical voices, preservers, and performers of Black feminist expressive culture.