Cheryl Thompson

On sabattical Fall 2024 - Winter 2025 - Spring-Summer 2025.

Dr. Thompson's research and public engagement is centred on Black performance, dance, theatre, festivals, fashion, media, and the visual arts - as they intersect with, are stored and contested within archives. Her work centres Black creatives, scholars, artists, musicians, actors and directors, dancers and choreographers. Dr. Thompson is also an author of complex historiographies (primarily 19th and 20th centuries) about race, culture, systems of promotion, theatre and performance.

Dr. Thompson's research program, teaching approach and scholarly praxis all embrace a constant thinking and rethinking, learning and unlearning, imagining and reimagining about what she knows, has been taught, what and who she reads, and what ideas she engages and re-engages with. When Dr. Thompson teaches, not only does she pay mindful attention to diversifying readings on course syllabi, she also includes voices that reflect the students in her classroom. She unpacks terms and aims to create a sense of shared knowledge creation, rather than employing a top-down hierarchical approach to teaching and learning. Dr. Thompson is purposeful when sharing her research across multiple disciplines, to academic and non-academic audiences, in-person and virtually. By embracing an ethos of belonging as a core principle in her teaching and research, she aims to create an environment where all students and audiences are seen, heard, and even when challenged by the ideas of others, she aims to ensure all parties feel supported through the process of having difficult conversations. As a Black-identified woman scholar-writer, Dr. Thompson is ultimately committed to confronting invisibilities, absences, and forgotten people, place, and histories.

Black Creative Lab (external link)  aims to be an incubator for Black artists, dancers, filmmakers, writers, and creative individuals. Through public engagement, digital content creation, and collaborative projects, Black Creative Lab is creating space, encouraging dialogue, and developing opportunities for persons who identify as Black. Black Creative Lab can be reached at www.theblackcreativelab (external link) , YouTube, and on Instagram (external link) .

Recent publications

Thompson, Cheryl. Blackface Nation, 1920-1997. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press (writing; anticipated 2026).

Thompson, Cheryl. Blackface Up North: Locating Blackness in “Big-Time” Vaudeville and Canadian Amateur Minstrelsy, 1896–1919. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press (under review; anticipated 2025).

Thompson, Cheryl. Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Plantation Slavery in the Age of Theatrical Reproduction, 1604-1895. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press (under review; anticipated 2024).

Thompson, Cheryl & Campbell, Miranda (Eds.). Creative Industries in Canada. Vancouver: Canadian Scholars Press, 2022.

Thompson, Cheryl. Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2021.

Thompson, Cheryl. Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2019.

Thompson, Cheryl (Guest Ed.), Special Issue on “Black Canadian Creativity, Expressive Cultures, and Narratives of Space and Place.” The Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire 56 3 (Winter 2021): 213-380.

Thompson, Cheryl. “Black Canadians in the Journal of Canadian Communication: Is there a Problem with Speaking for Others?” Canadian Journal of Communication Special Issue, On the Margins of the Margins: Racism and Colonialism in Canadian Communication Studies (47) 3 (2022): 440-461. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjc.2022-0029 (external link) .

Sample of supervised ComCult projects

In-progress - Shanice Wolters, PhD Candidate; “Uncovering Album Art: Black Female Imagery on Music Cover Packaging”

In progress - Asya Twahir, MA Student; “Indie Praxis: A Reading of Independent Filmmaking through the Lens of Anti-capitalist Thought"

In progress - Sadie Epstein-Fine, MA Student; TBD

2024 - Emilie Jabouin, PhD; “Black Women Writers: Newspapers, Expressive Cultures, and Organizing, 1890-1910s in English Canada”

2023 - Taia Goguen-Garner; MRP: “Alternative Ways of Historical Knowledge
Dissemination: Black History on Instagram”

2022 - Temilade Adebiyi; MRP - "Where Femvertising Meets Black Feminism: Inside
Nike’s Feminist Aesthetic and Collaboration with Serena Williams”

2022 - Stedman Tabiri; MRP: “Fandom, Fashion, & the Black Canon: A 'Postmodern' Film"

ComCult Teaching Activities

• CC8902 Research Methodologies
• CC8836 Selected Topics in Media and Culture: Race, Gender and Technology