Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of Performance Studies & Theatre at Northwestern University and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology — he joins us to present Imagination as a Form of Study, a performance and reading that moves through questions of gardening, the feeling of liquidity in motion, and the afro-future of teaching Black dance forms.

Dance and movement sit at the center of Professor DeFrantz’s scholarship and artistry. For Professor DeFrantz, dance is never just performance; it is a way of thinking, remembering, and passing down culture, a practice where the body holds knowledge that words alone cannot carry. His visit offers the Wheaton community, a chance to engage with a scholar-artist who reminds us that moving together is also a way of studying together, and that imagination itself can be a discipline we practice with our whole bodies. He brings to Wheaton a vision rooted in our shared capacity to do better, inviting us all to engage our creative spirit toward a collective good that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, proto-feminist, and queer-affirming.

Free tickets can be reserved via the Watson Box Office.