In this talk based on her award-winning book, Tina Post argues that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness. Post tracks instances and meanings of deadpan—a vaudeville term meaning “dead face”—across literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life. Her work reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive.