Talk Abstract
This talk focuses on Living with Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100 (1999) by Yvonne Welbon a documentary film centered on the life of African American lesbian centenarian Ruth Ellis. In the film, Ellis asserts that cultivating “atmosphere” interpersonally in daily life engenders longevity. I examine Ellis’ formulation of black queer atmosphere as a site of imagining that advances the livability of racialized sexual difference. Drawing on queer of color critique, black gender and sexuality studies, and visual cultural studies, I argue that Living with Pride puts forth a model of longevity that is personally and collectively grounded in queer of color resistant social practice that troubles public health life expectancy discourses. I closely consider Ellis’ assertion in the film that she: “. . . was never in—What you call it? . . . Closet.” Although Ellis explicitly disavows “the closet," in the film and commonly she is often referred to as “out.” I engage the ways in which both “out” and “never in” render Ellis’ living legible within LGBTQ cultural politics.
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The College of Arts