The Right to Rave: The Black Feminist Imagination as Liberatory Praxis on the EDM Dance Floor

In this talk, Dr. Jasmine Henry explores the politics of EDM dance floors to examine how Black women DJs negotiate the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality through their creative performance practices. She demonstrates how Black women DJs use their imagination and technological agency to negotiate inequitable dance floor dynamics and recenter Black, femme, and queer perspectives in the EDM industry. Ultimately, she reveals how these DJs transform dance floors into what bell hooks calls \”homeplaces\” – restorative sites of resistance where marginalized people feel safe, accepted, and free.