E. Patrick Johnson facts for kids

Elondust Patrick Johnson (born March 1, 1967) is an American academic scholar and aritist best known as the creator of Quare theory. He is dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor of Performance Studies and African-American studies at Northwestern University. Johnson is the founding director of the Black Arts Consortium at Northwestern. His scholarly and artistic contributions focus on performance studies, African-American studies and women and gender studies.

Early life

Born Elondust Patrick Johnson on March 1, 1967, the youngest of seven children in Hickory, North Carolina, Johnson was raised by his mother, Sarah M. Johnson, a factory worker. They grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in Ridgeview, a majority-Black section of Hickory. He was mentored by black women in the Ridgeview Community, including Z. Ann Hoyle, who became the first black alderman of Hickory's city council. He attended Hickory High School, where he was senior class president, and later the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At UNC-Chapel Hill, he majored in speech communications and received both his bachelor and master's degrees from there. He got his Ph.D. in speech communications at Louisiana State University.

Career

Johnson became an assistant professor of English at Amherst College. In 2000, he joined the faculty of the performance studies department at Northwestern University as assistant professor, then received tenure and a joint appointment in African-American studies in 2003. From 2003 to 2006 and 2014 to 2016, he served as the director of graduate studies for the department of performance studies. He served as the chair of performance studies from 2006 to 2011. Johnson was promoted to full professor of African-American studies and performance studies in 2007 before becoming the Carlos Montezuma Professor of African-American Studies and Performance Studies in 2011. He was appointed dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, on August 1, 2020.

Personal life

Johnson is married to Stephen J. Lewis. Lewis is an arts and media producer at Northwestern and writes articles for the university. Johnson mentions him in the acknowledgment of some of his books.

Research

Johnson's first book, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, examines how blackness is appropriated and performed within and outside African American culture. It won the Lilla A. Heston Award and the Errol Hill Award.

Published in 2014 with Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews and essays is a collection of writings that feature seven solo performances by emerging and established feminist performance artists from the past three decades. The book received an honorable mention for the Errol Hill Book Award.

In 2013, Johnson published Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis, an edited collection of essays written by Dwight Conquergood, who selected Johnson to publish his work before his death in 2004. Conquergood was an ethnographer in the field of performance studies whose ethnographic methods focused on power, privilege, and researcher reflexivity/responsibility.

Other work

Johnson has served on tenure and promotion evaluations, completed administrative service for Northwestern, and served as an associate editor for publications including Text & Performance Quarterly, Cultural Studies, and Gay & Lesbian Quarterly.

He is a member of several professional organizations including the American Society for Theatre Research, American Studies Association, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Cultural Studies Association, Mid America Theater Association, Modern Language Association, and National Communication Association.

Johnson has served as convener for a number of academic conferences.

Selected honors

• In 1996 the Hickory City Council honored Johnson with his own day, citing his accomplishments as the first African American born and raised in Hickory to earn a Ph.D.
• Awarded "Esteem Outstanding Service Award" in 2010
• Awarded "Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguised Performace" in 2010
• In 2010, Johnson was inducted into the Chicago Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Hall of Fame "for his leadership in the African-American LGBT community."
• Awarded "Otto Reneé Castillo Award for Political Theatre" in 2014
• In 2015, Johnson received the Oscar Brockett Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Association of Theatres in Higher Education.