The Pittsburgh Humanities Festival is a sort of an intellectual mixtape. In one three-day stretch Downtown this weekend, you’ll find presentations on everything from flamenco culture to fascism in America, a talk by Ira Glass of This American Life to The Legacy of Women in Hip Hop – the latter, a program that includes a concert by rap icon Monie Love.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust festival, which began in 2015, remains as eclectic as ever. It runs Fri., March 24, through Sun., March 26, with several programs that illuminate local history and culture.
For instance, on Saturday, Duane Binion and Jon Easter III, of True T Pittsburgh, present “The Category Is …: A Deep Dive Into The World of Vogue and Ballroom Culture.” If all you know about voguing is that one old Madonna video, Binion and Easter have plenty of history and context to add.
Ballroom culture grew out of what Binion calls a mid-20th-century “revolt” by queer people of color in Harlem against another underground community, the white-dominated drag scene. Shut out by racism, they formed their own “houses” for mutual support and developed jaw-dropping dance and fashion styles.
“This was actually a community built out of necessity — to kind of uplift and create our own comfort zone — that has now evolved and grown into something so big I don’t even know what to call it anymore,” says Binion, executive director of True T, an arts and wellness group that serves queer people of color and promotes ballroom culture here.
Ballroom and vogue styles have gone worldwide, and left their mark on mainstream culture. But Binion said their legacy is multi-faceted.
“The ballroom community is ultimately – it’s family,” said Binion. “It’s most comparable to a fraternity or sorority which you are joining for competition – there is opportunity to win, there is opportunity for more visibility and fame. However, the bigger goal is to help people’s lives.”
On Sunday, Kent State University history professor Elaine Frantz gives a talk called “Creating the Pittsburgh Police.” Frantz, who lives in Mount Lebanon, is writing a history of policing here. Her Humanities Festival talk focuses on Pittsburgh from the time of the city’s founding, in the 18th century, through the creation of the first modern police force here, in 1887.
The earliest people assigned to keep public order here were unpaid constables, and — even into the Civil War era — police had little training, Frantz said. But the same controversy accompanied their work as makes the headlines today.
“One continuity is that there’s always been a sense, or at least a critique of police that maybe they’re not serving everyone equally,” she said.
That dynamic was more pronounced in Pittsburgh than elsewhere, she said, because of the city’s labor orientation and culture of strikes. “There is a sense in Pittsburgh among workers through this period that police might be aligned with the forces of capital,” Frantz said. “Or that police represent elite attempts to control workers.”
Police were also responsible for capturing Black people who had escaped slavery, which added to their unpopularity, she said.
“I want to understand today’s police, and what about police is sort of baked in and inevitable and has a very long history to it, and what about policing is emerging today which might be easier to change,” Frantz added.
The Humanities Festival is co-directed by David Shumway, director of the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and Randal Miller, director of special projects for the Cultural Trust.
The March 25 Ira Glass event (“Seven Things I’ve Learned”) takes place at the Byham Theater. All other programs take place at the Trust Arts Education Center.
More information on the festival, including a complete schedule, is here.
