As of 2020, an estimated 5.17 million people were disenfranchised in the U.S. because of a felony conviction. My arts-based research presentation, disenfranchisement, focuses on this form of voter suppression. Returning citizens not only already have to carry the label “ex-felon” for the rest of their lives, but they also face extreme discrimination daily when it comes to voting, housing, jobs, etc... These returning citizens are ex-felons for a reason. They have already paid their debt. It is not fair to continue to take even more from these individuals that have already lost so much.

I am presenting a performative sociological dance piece I have developed with the goal to bring more activism into dance. Dance does not have to be reserved for aesthetics, it can and should be used as a platform for social justice. We can learn so much about sociological imagination through this visual platform, and vice versa, sociology can be informed through the integration of arts based methodology. For example, my piece stems from the public issue of voter suppression to the private trouble of being a disenfranchised “ex-felon.” Being able to bring private troubles to the public eye is essential in our search for a more just social world. Dance opens the door to people from very cushioned lifestyles to be able to visualize the private troubles that are connected to large public issues that may not affect them on the same scale. The more people that are connected over personal troubles, the more people that are fighting together for the reformation of public issues.