Academic Sessions: London 2003

Race and the Enlightenment

Convenors:
David Bindman, University College London; d.bindman@ucl.ac.uk  
Dr Angela Rosenthal, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA.

Abstract:

This session offers diverse perspectives on the role of the visual in shaping ideas of human variety, and cultural and racial difference. Papers will address such topics as colour and human complexion (‘whiteness’ as well as ‘blackness’), art and the teleology of race, the representation of racialized Europeans and non–Europeans, methodologies applied to the Enlightenment and its ‘invention’ of race, and fictions of Empire, in the period c.1700–c.1870. The session will also include testimony by a renowned contemporary artist, whose work will shed light on the shadows of Enlightenment.

Eva Frojmovic (Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds) Savage Jews? Picart’s Circumcision in Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses des tous les peuples du monde (Amsterdam 1723).

Geoff Quilley (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich) A Breed Apart: Race and the Visualization of the 18th–Century Sailor Agnes Lugo–Ortiz(Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Dartmouth College, USA) Bordering the Enlightenment: Portraiture and the Beginnings of the Slaveholding Plantation System in Cuba.

Judith Jackson Fossett (University of Southern California) Silhouettes, Race and the Visual Culture of Antislavery.

Julie Roberts (Massey University,Wellington,New Zealand) Black looks and the White gaze: Augustus Earle and the Antipodean Other.

Maud Sulter (Artist, Curator, Poet, Playwright) Sugar is Sweet.

Deborah Cherry (University of Sussex) Hauntings at the Heart of Empire: Trafalgar Square now and then.

back to top


Please note: You will need the most recent version of Adobe's Acrobat Reader on your computer to be able to read downloadable files on this site. It can be downloaded free from the Adobe website.