Date:
Location:
"Race, Inequality, and Visual Culture: New Questions, New Voices"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Abstract:
The increased relevance of visual culture within contemporary life has correlated with a rise in scholarly attention to visual production. This symposium taps into this widespread shift towards the visual, exploring recent developments in scholarly studies that argue for the centrality of visual arts to the question of race. It brings together a group of scholars whose works aim to rethink their fields from the perspectives, experiences, and struggles of Africans and African descendants, questioning scholarly traditions that have been shaped by inequality and exclusion.
The panels explore the role of visual arts as a key force in the making of political and social life: In the production of racialized identities, the (un)making of colonization and the decolonial, the power of archives and art museums in shaping structures of racial inequality, among other issues.
Contacts:
Cary García Yero
garciayero@fas.harvard.edu
Anna Skarpelis
anna.skarpelis@wzb.eu
Cosponsored by the Department of History, University of Toronto and Eikones- Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel.
9:30-10:00 AM EST | Welcome and Opening Remarks
Speakers:
Cary Aileen García Yero, Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Toronto (2021-2022); PhD, Department of History, Harvard University.
A.K.M. Skarpelis, Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion (2018-2021). NOMIS Fellow, Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel (2021-2022).
Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Leverhulme Distinguished Professor and Senior Fellow, St. Anthony's College, University of Oxford.
10:00-11:45 AM EST | Panel 1: Rethinking Art in German Colonialism
This panel brings together scholars whose work rethinks the role of art in expanding and sustaining colonial rule, as well as the afterlives of colonial artistic production in the contemporary period. Scholars discuss the absence of Blackness from discussions on German state violence, photography as stabilizer of race under National Socialism, restitution debates in colonial museums and, more theoretically, the interconnection between capitalist modes of extraction and photographic form. Across different forms of artistic production, deployment and afterlives in German colonialism, the panel centers around the question of how art – especially photography – was pivotal in fixing racial meaning and stabilizing imperial power.
Commentator:
Laura Wexler, Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University.
Panelists:
A.K.M. Skarpelis, Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion (2018-2021). NOMIS Fellow, Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel (2021-2022).
Zoe Samudzi, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, San Francisco.
Mirjam Brusius, Research Fellow, German Historical Institute London.
Matthew Vollgraff, Research Associate, Warburg Institute.
Lorena Rizzo, Senior Lecturer, University of Basel.
Kevin Coleman, Associate Professor, Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto.
12:30-2:45 PM EST | Panel 2: Afro-Latin American Visual Arts: The Making of a New Field
This panel presents scholars whose works contribute to recent efforts to establish Afro-Latin American Arts as a recognized field of academic study. It involves research on both Afro-Latin American authorship and on visual representation; research on the art created by Afro-Latin Americans, and on the artistic production that recreates African-related themes and that interprets blackness and racial difference in the region. The panel covers a wide geographical and temporal framework – from the colonial period to present day; from diverse spaces including Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, to Lima –, discussing some of the main questions, challenges, and future projections driving the expansion of the field in its goal of better understand the power and limitations of visual arts in dismantling racial inequality across Latin America.
Commentator:
Tamara Walker, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto.
Panelists:
Cary Aileen García Yero, Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Toronto (2021-2022); PhD, Department of History, Harvard University.
Abigail Lapin Dardashti, Assistant Professor in Art History, University of California, Irvine.
Ximena Gómez, Assistant Professor of American Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Kleber Amancio, Professor, Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia.
2:15-2:30 PM EST | Closing Remarks
Speaker:
Suzanne Blier, Faculty Associate. Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts, Department of History of Art and Architecture; Professor of African and African American Studies, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwldO2vpz0oE9y5ODSjfS7YZ31FhsuhmjeS
Please note: This event requires registration in advance in order to receive the meeting link and password.
