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Jenny Kirton

Jenny Kirton is a PhD student based in the Department of English Literature at the University of Sheffield. Her research project, which is funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities, traces themes of burial and resurrection across texts by Suzan-Lori Parks, Marita Bonner, and Toni Morrison. She is particularly interested in creative approaches to historical absences, which endeavour to revise or rewrite the historical record. Jenny is currently working on ‘Women in Lockdown,’ a project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by community archive group: Sheffield Feminist Archive.

African American Theatre and The S Street Salon

This article is adapted from a presentation given at the London Arts and Humanities Partnership postgraduate conference, 21st January 2022 During the Harlem Renaissance period, 1461 S Street, Washington D.C., the home of Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966), represented an important hub of creativity and community for African American women writers. ‘Saturday nighters’ at the S Street Salon, as they came to be known, inspired and informed landmark literary works of the period. The salon established what scholar Treva B. Lindsey describes as ‘an African American women-centred counterpublic,’ also highlighting the under-acknowledged role that Black women in Washington D.C. played in energizing and shaping the Harlem Renaissance period as a whole.[i] While celebrated male writers of the early twentieth century such as W.E.B Du Bois and Countee Cullen certainly participated, these sessions represented a critical space where African American women playwrights such as Marita Bonner, Mary Burrill, and of course the host, Georgia Douglas […]