Conference Program

Block Museum Pick-Laudati Auditorium

Friday March 2nd 2007

9:30 am Continental Breakfast

10:00 am

• Opening Remarks
  Aldon Morris, Associate Dean of Faculty, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University

10:30-1:00 pm

• Mapping the Slave Trade in the Sixteenth through Early Nineteenth Centuries: Diagrams of Slavery and Abolition
  • Marcus Wood, Professor of English, University of Sussex, Blind Memory
  • Cheryl Finley, Assistant Professor, Art History Department, Cornell University, “It’s Part of My DNA”: The Embedded Life of the Slave Ship Icon
  • Laurence Brown, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Social Sciences, American University of Paris, Seeing Slavery during the Haitian Revolution
  • Keith Piper, London-based Artist
    
    Discussant, Sherwin Bryant, Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University

Lunch Break

2:30- 5:00 pm

• Evidence of Things Unseen: Slavery, Photography, and (Blind) Memory in the Nineteenth Century
  • Jill Casid, Assistant Professor, Art History Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison,  "You Became a Scientific Profile": Race, Sexuality, and the Origins of Photographic Identification
  • Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of California, Berkeley Truth's Shadow, Slavery's Substance
  • Hank Willis Thomas, New York-based Artist
    
    Discussant, Harvey Young, School of Communication, Northwestern University

5:00 pm

• Keynote Address: Fred Wilson, New York-based Artist
  The Leon Forrest Lecture – sponsored by the Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University
  Introduction by Daniel Linzer, Dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University

6:00 pm Reception in Block Museum

Saturday March 3rd  2007

10:00 – 12:30 pm

• “Redemptive” Public Art: Memorializing and Forgetting Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation in the Postcolonial and Post Civil Rights Era
  • Petrina Dacres, Chair, Department of Art History, Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, Redemption Song: Remembering the Slave Past
  • Wayne Modest, Director, Museums of History and Ethnography Division,
     Institute of Jamaica, Slavery and the Caribbean Exhibitionary
  • Chris Cozier, Trinidad-based Artist
    
    Discussant, Sandra Richards, School of Communication and Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University

Lunch Break

2:00- 4:30 pm

• “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried”: Slavery in Contemporary Art and Popular Culture
  • Gwendolyn DuBois-Shaw, Associate Professor, History of Art Department, University of Pennsylvania, Creoles, Krewes, and Quadroon Balls:
    "The Louisiana Project" by Carrie Mae Weems
  • Barnor Hesse, Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University, Anti/Slavery of the Spectacle
  • Lowery Stokes Sims, Director, Studio Museum of Harlem, Legacies
  • Mendi+Keith Obadike, New Jersey-based Artists
    
    Discussant, Darby English, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, University of Chicago

4:30 pm

• Closing Remarks
  Saidiya V. Hartman, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University

Conference Program subject to change. Check here for updates.