A 5-episode series featuring award-winning playwrights, dramaturges, and directors from Africa on conversations around dramaturgical processes.

The Ethical Practices in the Arts (EPA), a seven-part workshop series in Mass Culture’s Training Respectful, Adaptive and Inclusive Networks in the Arts (T.R.A.I.N), focuses on the practice of ethics in the communities we find ourselves as artists.

Short description: This research explores the following questions: How might asymmetric power relations be at play in both students’ and teachers’ anxieties around cultural appropriation? What role might contemporary identity politics within and beyond university contexts play in shaping such fears, such as the politicization of identity along left vs. right-wing groupings? How is cultural appropriation related to wokeness in higher education? How might social media and other venues for identity construction mediate these fears? How can we distinguish ethically-sound forms of cultural sharing, respect and appreciation, and how might such distinctions help to address both fears around cultural appropriation, and the deleterious impact that cultural appropriation exerts on victimized communities? How might epistemologies of ignorance and contemporary forms of activism impact these fears?

Members: Dr. Taiwo Afolabi and Dr. Marthinus Conradie