Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
CLACS

White Zombies and Black Labor: Specters of Slavery and Rebellion

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

5:30pm – 7:00pm

List Art Building, 64 College St. Providence.

Orozco’s "Epic of American Civilization" provides a powerful critique of the conquest and colonization of the Americas. And yet, it makes no mention of the institution of slavery in the formation of its modern nation-states. In this talk, Mary Coffey, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American Visual Culture, Department of Art History at Dartmouth College will address this silence and offer speculative readings of the Epic that speak to the specters of slavery and rebellion that haunt the mural. She will pay particular attention to Orozco’s vision of the “two Americas” as well as to the “Modern Industrial Man,” asking what possibilities are opened up by reading him as a person of African descent?

 

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