B. Brian Foster is an ethnographer and multi-medium storyteller working to document and interpret the culture, folklore, and placemaking practices of Black communities in the rural U.S. South. For the last ten years, he has set his work in several towns and small communities in north Mississippi, where he was born and raised. Brian’s areas of expertise include the sociology of racism and race, place studies, urban/rural sociology, and qualitative methods. His perspective and theoretical orientation are rooted in the histories and paradigms of Black Sociology and the Black Radical Tradition.
Brian has written two books. I Don’t like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life (2020) chronicles the growth and development of blues tourism in the Mississippi Delta. His second book Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight (2024) is a collaborative photo-essay collection featuring the work of award-winning photographer Richard Frishman. Frishman’s hyperpixel photographs document vestiges of racism, oppression, and segregation in the U.S. (e.g., a set of double doors that once was a “Colored Entrance,” the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma), and Foster’s essays blend memoir and personal storytelling with ethnographic reporting and sociological analysis to offer piercing commentary on the realities and histories captured by the photographs.
Brian is working on a new book—Casino Town—which interrogates the cultural, environmental, and human impacts of casino development in the Mississippi Delta. He is also building an expansive archive of oral history interviews and photographs focused on the histories and placemaking practices of Black communities in the rural South.
October 10, 2024
Trouble in Mind—Theatrical Performance and Talkback
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Zoellner Diamond Theater
Event Description: Written by Alice Childress. Wiletta Mayer, an African American actress of a certain age, has spent her career playing stereotypes, trapped on a merry-go-round of mammies, maids, and other menials. The curtain rises on the first day of rehearsal for Chaos in Belleville, a Broadway-bound play that tackles the harsh truths of racism in America. But when those truths spill out of the play and into the rehearsal hall, will Wiletta's insistence on her dignity cost her the work she desperately needs? Kashi Johnson, director. After the performance, join Brian for the after play talk-back session. Lehigh students attend for free. Non-Lehigh students must pay $12. Tickets can be purchased on the Zoellner Arts Center website. The Zoellner Diamond Theater is accessible by elevator and stairs. Parking is available at the Zoellner parking garage.
*This is a 5x10 event.
