centerforexperimentalethnography
Since 20--, John L. Jackson Jr. and Nora Gross, have been working on Making Sweet Tea...
Making Sweet Tea, a feature-length experimental/ethnographic documentary, follows the personal and scholarly trajectory of researcher and activist E. Patrick Johnson. Johnson (the first Black man from his small town of Hickory, North Carolina, to earn a PhD) uses social scientific and humanistic methods to examine questions of identity and community in contemporary society. As someone who has documented his own coming-out story, Johnson also seeks to understand the many different experiences of Black gay men from the Southern United States and to share their stories with audiences through both scholarly and artistic means. Most recently, he has transformed his extensive ethnographic life history interviews with gay Black Southerners into a one-man theatrical show, Sweet Tea.
This ethnographic film, Making Sweet Tea, combines footage from the rehearsal and production of that show with documentary moments from the lives of both Johnson and his interview participants, depicting both his research process and the complexities of his relationships with the men in his study. The film, much like Johnson's work itself, attempts to transcend conventional assumptions about what counts as "scholarship"—and to reimagine how such scholarship can/should be shared. How do we represent portions of other people's life stories? How do those stories impact us as researchers and viewers? What does it even mean to blur the boundaries between art and science, scholarship and activism, and what's to be gained from doing so? Making Sweet Tea, the film, attempts to place these interconnected themes and questions in critical and creative conversation.
john L. jackson jr.
nora gross
e. patrick johnson
Executive Producer/Director
Producer/Director/Cinematographer
tentative release October 2018
Sweat Tea Teaser: So What's the Tea?
visit sweatteafilm.com
PENN MUSEUM 336
e: experimental-ethno@upenn.edu
affiliated STUDENTS
CURRENT CEE PROJECTS
faculty projects
EQUIPMENT RESERVATION
BOOK SPACE
GRAD CERTIFICATE
FORMS FOR CALLOUTS & PARTNERSHIPS