This fall I will be teaching the seminar Reclaiming the Black Body in European Art at at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College. The course examines scholarship on the depiction of African Europeans in art and literature, focusing on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries.
The class will examine how white Europeans depicted Black bodies as a way to define their own racial identity. We will also examine how artists of color from the United State traveled to Europe to seek training and created works that were radical because they argued for the humanity of the Black body. The course is designed for students majoring in all disciplines who seek to better understand how bodily imagery is racialized and historical strategies of resistance. Due to the pandemic the course is designated as hybrid: we will meet online with opportunities for in-person learning. Student will make individual research appointments at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and visit artworks independently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More details about the course can be found here.
UPDATE 4/22/2022: My course received this year’s teaching prize from the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.