Good evening and thank you for joining us for the first in a series of four terror elections in American art.
The series is sponsored by the Tara Foundation for American Art, which is dedicated to fostering exploration,
understanding and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences.
In collaboration with the Department of History of Art at Oxford and Worcester College,
Oxford, the foundation grants an annual scholarship to a leading scholar of American art.
My name is Phillip Bullock. Director of Torch,
the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Torch is delighted to host this lecture series as part of our Big Tent Life Event series,
which forms part of the humanities cultural programme. One of the founding stones for the future, Stephen A. Schwartzmann Centre for the Humanities.
If you have any questions during this evening's lecture,
then please do put them in the YouTube chat box and we'll do our best to answer as many of them as we can by the end of the session.
Tonight's lecturer, Amy Mooney, visiting professor in American Art for twenty nineteen twenty.
We'll be introduced by Professor Alister Wright, head of the History of Art Department and Tutorial Fellow in.
Just publications include Mateys and the Subject of Modernism from 2004 and Paradise Remembered.
No, I know a suite from two thatt and he has also published essays and articles on topics ranging from Case on Dongen to Maximilian Luce to Ford,
Maddox, Brown and non Western modern listeners.
So it's my great pleasure to welcome Alice to this evening and without further ado, to hand the proceedings over to him.
Thank you. Thank you, Philip.
And thanks to all the other people at Torch who have helped so much in setting up this event.
I'd also like to join Phillip in thanking the Terra Foundation for American Art and Worcester College, Oxford,
both of whom have provided very generous support not only for this lecture series,
but also for the visiting professor programme that has brought Professor Amy Mooney to Oxford this year.
The terror programme has been utterly transformational for the study of American art in Oxford.
Each year that we have a professor, it's built up an ever expanding group of students and faculty who are engaged with American art.
So, again, thank you to the terror. Thank you to you, sir, for making this possible.
It is a real pleasure to introduce Amy today. She is a wonderful colleague.
And since arriving as the terror professor in October, she has in innumerable ways enriched the study of American art and culture here in Oxford.
At the end of the year, she will return to her permanent position as associate professor at Columbia College, Chicago,
where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary American art with a particular focus on African-American art and visual culture.
This is a field in which she has published widely. In 2004, her brilliant monograph on the Chicago painter Archibald J.
Mottley Junior appeared in the David C. Driskell series on African-American art.
Amy has also contributed to numerous anthologies and catalogues. These include, to name just a few remain appeared in the Modernist Tradition 2009.
Black is Black. Eight 2013. Archibald Mufleh Jazz Age Modernist 2014.
And most recently, The Armed Face. New Perspectives in Portraiture 2018.
AIDS research has contributed enormously to our understanding both of the careers of a number of important but understudied
artists and of the wider political and racial discourses by which art and portraiture have been and often still are framed.
The high esteem in which a scholarship is held is reflected in a series of
prestigious fellowships awarded by the American Council of Learnt Study Societies,
the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, in association with the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the National Portrait Gallery,
the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Tara Foundation for American Art.
Amy is currently working on two major research projects. The first entitled titled Say It With Pictures Then and Now is a collaboration with the photo
historian Deborah Willis at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College,
Chicago, taking the form of a digital humanities project together with an exhibition and catalogue.
Say It With Pictures recovers and critically examines the work of African-American photographers active in Chicago.
Between the 80s, 90s and the 1930s, the second major project on which Amy is currently working is a book entitled
Portraits of Noteworthy Character Negotiating a Collective American Identity,
to be published by Duke University Press.
The book investigates the ways in which individuals and institutions used portraiture to affect social change.
What we'll hear today in this, the first of Amy's four terror lectures draws on material from that book.
I'm very excited to hear what she has to say and I'm sure the audience is also. So without further ado, I will hand over to Amy.
Thank you, Alastair, for that very kind introduction and thank you all for joining us today for these lectures.
I very much appreciate also Alastair's willingness to be the moderator for the post lecture discussion.
I, too, would like to express my appreciation for my colleagues in the Department of the
History of Art at Oxford and at Wooster College who have so warmly welcomed me.
I must also offer profound gratitude to the Terra Foundation and to Columbia College,
Chicago for supporting such opportunities, as well as my Oxford students who I am been so privileged to work with.
Finally, I need to express my sincere appreciation to our colleagues at Oxford Research
Centre for the Humanities for providing the platform for this evening's Lifestream.
This is the first of a four part lecture series, as Allaster said, that is drawn from my forthcoming book,
Portraits of Noteworthy Character Negotiating a Collective American Identity,
in which I explore the central role that Porchester played in fostering social change in the United States as
progressive individuals and institutions relied on its cultural capital to further their political ideologies.
Today's lecture examines the factors that influence the development of pedagogical strategies for reading
and realising the portrait as conceived for students at historically black colleges and universities.
During the post bellum era and its dissemination then to broader audiences through popular media, visual culture and fine art.
Looking to illustrations and early photography, I will trace the precedents for the ideological situating of black subjectivity within
the politics of respectability that later will inform the retort trope of the new Negro,
which we further explored in the lecture on June 1st. I'd like to begin with two of the most iconic portraits of Americans ever produced.
In fact,
I'm going to use these portraits as a sort of anchor for the lecture series is that you represent two Americans held in the highest of regards.
It's an interesting turn of phrase, took hold, one high in regard signalling the feelings of respect,
admiration, perhaps even an underlying desire for emulation.
Regard expresses connectivity as in regards to this matter.
And finally, perhaps most importantly, for an art historian to regard is to look and by all means.
These are amongst the most looked at contemporary portraits in vaccines they're unveiling in.
More than four million people have visited the Natural Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., to see these portraits.
Their popularity is such that Director Kim's agent organised a five city nationwide tour of the portraits
to give audiences who might not otherwise have an opportunity to see these remarkable paintings.
And according to the gallery's Web site quote,
This special presentation will enhance the conversation surrounding the power of portraiture and its potential to engage communities and quote,
Indeed, people are engaged with these portraits.
The ubiquitous selfie with portraits with their subsequent circulation within social media testifies to the desire to be seen with,
associated with and defined by these portraits.
Though we certainly could argue that there are compelling works of art masterfully in innovatively rendered by Candi Wiley in any shelled,
I'm not entirely convinced that this phenomena can be explained as a massive wave of newly found art appreciation.
Instead, I want to query if these portraits serve as a primer teaching us how to look and how to be see both as individuals and as a nation.
The Obamas represent a set of collectively held values that have long defined American aspirations,
including ambition, optimism and perseverance in the face of adversity.
For eight years, they literally performed the body politic in taking a portrait with representations of them.
Perhaps it's possible to identify these characteristics within oneself and align oneself
with the body politic represented by the first African-American president and first lady.
Then by sharing on social media. This portrait of a portrait becomes an opportunity to negotiate one's place within the collective.
Extending self-determination into the public sphere. The portrait allows for critical consideration of one's self in relation to others,
teaching lessons of value to looking and its subsequent determinations of the social, political and economic status.
It can be an empowering medium through which one can subvert the status quo.
Yet at the same time be subject to historic hierarchies and inequities.
For this reason, a historic examination of the ways that we categorise,
compare and connect with one another through portraiture seems not only relevant, but necessary.
There are many points within the United States history upon which one could press this enquiry.
But the one that seems most charged is in the 80s 90s, especially after the Supreme Court decision,
Plessy vs. Ferguson, with the passing of legal segregation.
The ability to discern categorise racial identity took on a new urgency.
Evaluative looking. The scrutiny attended to skin tone,
hair texture and facial features afforded the denial of citizenship in the inequalities of Jim
Crow and the terrorism of white supremacy in an effort to counter these oppressive measures.
African-Americans develop strategies of resistance that drew upon the categories of class and gender and the values of dignity and respect.
Examining the sources that conditioned American visuality reveals why the Obama portraits are in fact held in such high
regard during an era marked by racist stereotypes that sought to dehumanise black subjects as seen in this character.
I would just call the press. Science and spacecraft is just a little out of order.
Here we go. Our first two start primer directly addresses self fashion in a conversational manner.
The African-American author Elias Inwood queries See girls, I know you'd like to take pictures.
Naturally pretty, wouldn't you? Well, the next time you give your photographer Sediq be yourselves and well, published in 1899,
the Negro in Adequate Novelty counselled African-American audiences through text and illustration that walked a fine line between sincerity,
satire and stereotype. Then we followed a late 19th century gendered prescription.
The girls would desire to be naturally pretty.
What was unique in addressing photographies role in generating a representation of a real self and what constitutes such a consciousness?
In a chapter titled Primping the Face would advise sitters that they should avoid peppering the lips,
squinting and even allowed for some short haired girls, if necessary, to wear wigs as long as it was not intended to deceive the boys here.
These are his words. Yet the author's most critical and repeated charge is that the photographic
portrait provides an opportunity to fashion an assured like this so distinctly
in a tone that simultaneously chiding and encouraging would address as one of
the most critical issues facing African-Americans at the turn of the century.
That of self representation.
An era marked by racist stereotypes that sought to dehumanise black subjects as seen in this caricature from the World's Columbian Exposition.
The other calls for self-determination and self acceptance, recognising the potential of the portrait as a tool for social change.
His words also resonate with the developments in contemporary thinking that propose the possibility of modern
black objectivity that sought to reconcile how one saw oneself versus how that himself was seen by others.
The etching that accompanies Wood's recommendations illustrates the development of self criticality for black subjects.
It also satirically works against the subject's the ability to see men.
Yet readers are presented with an African-American woman seated in a white photographer's studio, positioned in profile.
She's formally dressed with a hat adorned with flowers and feathers.
Her ramrod straight posture is facilitated by the heads down attached to the divine upon which she's seated.
Despite the degree of detail in the setting and clothing, the women's facial features are not distinctly legible due to the artist's reliance
on a heavy layering of black lines to generate the tonal values of her skin.
It's as if the meeting medium itself thwarts the possibility of the subject and the viewer from seeing her real self.
Ironically, the use of etching to represent photography prevents the exact ITU promised by the new technology.
As if reading the woman's mind, the words into argumentum appear just below the figure and the photographer looking askance at his subject,
removed lens to begin the exposure in the farming scene.
The scene woman with her Hattan waistcoat removed holds up her portrait with her mouth open and exclaims, That's not me.
As if she does not recognise her own Bosarge. Although the woman holds the resulting object of her scrutiny,
she cannot see herself as she was seen by the photographer is strange from her image and therefore from her real self.
The woman demonstrates the need for proper self criticality advocated by the author.
The overarching lesson is that such an experience is embarrassing but can be avoided by following the rules of respectability,
honing one's visual acuity and consciously constructing one's representation.
Thus not only becoming what would defines as the real self, but also how to hold that self in high regard.
This text in image testified to the impact of prescriptive literature on the formation of a black modern subjectivity,
and then one to consider how the ideation of respectability is presented by words and other prescriptive artists and authors was
a set aside and internalised into a visual language that affected the portrayal in regard of African American subjectivity.
Respectability, projections of chastity, intelligence, nobility, self-control,
self-awareness and virtue were amongst the values espoused in direct contradiction to the racist caricatures that dominated popular culture.
As the pads diagram from Boldon Thoughts testifies, the politics of respectability were profoundly gendered and structured by class and skin colour.
With advancements in printing, illustrations and photographs played a significant role in communicating how respectability might be
visualised and thereby realised the main focus on case studies were written by and for African-Americans.
The publication and circulation of etiquette text are part of a larger discursive movement in the
United States that encouraged the adoption of certain social conventions as a means of becoming urban,
modern selves worthy of citizenship from the late 18th 70s well into the early 20th century.
A surge of prescriptive literature sought to fulfil the promise of democracy for its ever evolving citizenry.
Immigrants and migrants alike were directed to the text with injunctions on manners, deportment,
character building and household management as a means of conforming to a Middle-Class Progressivist idea of the American citizen.
Due to developments in publishing distribution through direct mail and cereal formats and newspapers,
these guides became financially accessible and widely available.
Their lessons were promptly promoted widely from the pulpit to the classroom to the platform of the daily press.
For African-American audiences, these prescriptions were picked up, picked up the vestiges of abolitionist literature,
informing the pedagogy of historically black colleges and universities.
At Hampton University, for example,
on habits and manners promise a better life for those who earnestly and persistently followed its principles, laws of good society.
Similar sentiment was espoused in Hall's moral and mental capsule.
The determination of what comprises, though a good society or even a better life merits critical consideration,
given that self realisation and representation is never unequivocal.
The definition of who and what constitutes polite behaviour reveals and reifies social hierarchies.
Scholars have really considered etiquette as a divisive force between classes.
Yet to an era fraught with the oppositional politics of Booker T.
Washington and DWB Dubois, the codes of conduct proved to be a viable means of self determination,
whether in support of strategies of accommodation and self-help or the agency of the elite talented tenth conduct manuals deeply influenced.
Have students learnt to look at themselves and others. Course catalogues from the 80s 90s well into the 1920s at Atlantic University.
Hampton and Fisk included required classes in elocution, morality and manners.
Students who took photography classes with Kornelius Embody at Tuskegee Institute not only learnt how to lie and position their subjects,
but we're also exposed to the self evaluative prescriptions. Bhatti's classroom handouts, such as the Ten Commandments, cornflake,
moral responsibility with self imaging continuing the character lessons that Washington had delivered in the chapel talks at Tuskegee.
Purchase provided documentation of having good moral character in the critical consciousness of
how its performance impacted others because of the deeply ingrained racism that marked this era.
One cannot avoid the heavy charge of the portrait, which is why WGC two boys assemble the collection of portraits to demonstrate to the
world the social and economic progress of the African-Americans since the Civil War.
And yet, even in its most quotidian role of documenting the everyday life of black subjects, the portrait bore the weight of subjugation.
Although subjects can negotiate the correction, correctives of coercion and constraint,
every image of African-Americans was subject to the same visual scrutiny that historically had been used to deny,
refute and decimate the black body by looking to the influential strategies offered by the authors of prescriptive literature.
We come to a better understanding of the purpose of portraiture, both in its possibilities and limitations,
in securing one's presence, recognising one's ambition and assuring one's absolute insistence on personhood.
Considering the context in which the illustrated text are created and consulted,
I argue that etiquette afforded the opportunity to disassemble society expectations encounter the racist assertion that
civility was the exclusive property of whiteness and could only be enacted by African-Americans as a form of mimicry.
Though interactions through interactions presented in books,
newspapers and periodicals and posit etiquette as a means of mobility for the working class,
the rising black middle class also employed it as a distinguishing buffer against racism.
Further, the proliferation of advice literature during this era reflects a shift in the black athletes attitude
toward the masses as they adopted complicated positions that were both inclusive and exclusive.
Dubois advocated that the study and presentation of values collectively held by African-Americans would refute,
quote, a deep seated feeling that the real bias basis of colour prejudice in America is,
in fact that Negroes as a race are rude,
thoughtless and manners and altogether quite hopeless and sexual morals in regards to property rights and reverence for truth.
And it is 1914 nationwide survey. Morals and manners are run amongst Negro Americans.
Counter the false generalisations of inherent black inferiority.
With the presentation of specific social circumstances that prevented full participation, incivility including poverty,
a lack of education and employment as well as Jim Crow practises as part of the moral awakening called for by Dubois,
the author, so prescriptive that Ature assume public roles and iconographic positions within
the community of black elite becoming advocates and potential models to emulate.
It, as several scholars have noted, their self-help ideology espoused within prescriptive literature was more likely to perpetuate a
psychology of compulsion and coercion than a realisation of self autonomy and social equality.
Further, the purported uplift of respectability reveals that the desperate circumstances in which black elites
defensively appropriated dominant racist theories reaffirming their own positions of privilege and power,
beginning with the first wave of the great migrations, many believed that their so-called racial progress was threatened by public
deportment and social practises of migrants in order to protect their status.
Many saw etiquette as a means of continuing the promises of the reconstruction,
generating proof that African-Americans merited full civil rights through agendas of uplift.
The codes of respectability were widely disseminated.
Yet there were audiences who did not meet or even desire to a teen particular aspirations of the bourgeoisie.
For some, the circulation and codification of comportment allowed emulation.
But others approached such materials with a sceptical negotiation and or outright rejection.
Too often within the history of American portraiture,
representations of black subjects are read only through the lens of a progressive racial character.
This chapter in my book, Seeds, seeks to interrupt incompetent hate that trajectory,
calling out the agency of black subjects as they sought to imagine better selves and better futures.
That did not necessarily conform to a singular vision of middle class propriety in these sources.
We see the complex negotiations that engage black subjects as they determine the values and
behaviours that constituted their own personhood and how that personhood could be represented.
Instead of a fixed point, the real self called for by words and others necessitated the malleability and multibillions of performance.
It's a continual process of negotiation between self and society is performative and situational.
Be it sincere internalisation, hostile rejection or an ambivalent acknowledgement.
This chapter elucidates the ways that the performance of the polite informs the formation of a modern black's objectivity.
To understand the interdependence of portraiture and the performance of the polite.
Let's return to the Negro in etiquette.
While their lives and words offered African-American audiences strategies for achieving social equality through self-improvement,
inspired by the success of a series of lectures on proper comportment at historically black colleges,
as well as a serial advice column in mainstream magazines, newspaper the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
this African-American author not only made it clear connexion between manners and social justice.
He called upon these codes to end the horrific resurgence of lynching in the 80s 90s.
His dedication reads, quote, to my sainted mother, whose early teachings inspired my youthful heart to battle for the right to the logical
obliteration of lynch law and mob violence into the unity of the north and south.
This book is dedicated and quote, Following your stated purpose,
Woods reason that the gestures of civility countered the mythology of inferiority supported by eugenics, eugenicists and social Darwinism.
You also argued that because of the insidious nature of such falsehoods,
African-Americans needed to carefully construct all aspects of their public persona,
malling a corrective and superior herself to white and black audiences alike.
Yet at times, with its prescriptions,
also present a contradictory subscription to resist tropes that are especially parent in the 16 drawings that accompany the text unattributed.
The illustrations engage in the author's points, but they do not act as a direct core, Larry.
In some chapters, such as the one in which the author despairs,
the cakewalk the artist drew from the minstrel tropes that predominate in American visual culture during the 80s 90s.
For some, the council provided by Woods was purportedly tinged with.
Satire acknowledging the reader's awareness of the racist circumstances in which the words would be received.
A review from the African-American newspaper, The Freeman notes that, quote, a gentleman of culture and refinement.
The author's talk never drags. It's punctuated by wit, sarcasm and satire.
And the best and most effective means winning attention and respectful hearing in court.
Other reviews presented an internalisation, the racist perspectives, noting that,
quote, the aim of the author is to raise the ethical standard of our race.
He exposes the evils and the rudeness that are so common in our race.
According to scholar William Gatewood, once drew upon one of the most revered sources of etiquette, La Chesterfield's letters to his son,
published in 1774 as a means of educating his illegitimate son to the social codes of British aristocracy.
This source became a classic text by the 19th century.
Significantly with his council was not really aimed at those at the top rung of the black class structure,
but those who were upwardly mobile, ambitious and persons of the middle and lower classes.
Following the precedent of the France peace portraits and literary works such as the one scene in Villa Suite, these poems on various subjects,
religious and moral, or the autobiographical work such as the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave written by himself.
Woods included a photograph of himself to establish a visual, authoritative presence in this bustling portrait.
Woods positions his body to the left, but turns his face to directly gaze at the camera.
This act of direct engagement conveys the author's apogee of self empowerment,
as cultural historian Byron Wear reminds us upon the threat of lynching.
Social restrictions in the South prohibit black men from looking a white person directly in the eyes.
Thus, Woods begins his behaviour prescriptions with the oppositional gaze,
modelling the necessity for black individuals to negotiate but not to accept the constraints and convit pensions of white culture in history.
In keeping with the Washingtonian aesthetics of self-discipline through the exterior discipline,
he is impeccably groomed and formally attired for the occasion.
Wearing a dark suit, a crisp white shirt and a dapper bow tie, the author's propriety in dress becomes the uniform for the race man,
signalling the intellectual vocation a sense of rendering service.
By means of critical intelligence and moral action like Douglass and others before him would sign this name beneath his photograph,
authenticating his own likeness. But importantly, he adds the words sincerely yours,
thereby personalising the dedication to the reader and by beginning the text with this
visual affirmation of self self-possessed self-possession and extension of civility.
The other models, the very best behaviours that he prescribes for Boyd's the photographic portrait,
was an essential means of establishing subject hood and promoting social exchange.
Throughout his text, he conveys confidence to presume black readers encouraging to believe in and value their true selves as worthy subjects,
making their progress from enslavement visible to themselves and others, and classed themselves amongst those who enjoyed social status.
He's critical of effort, though, of African-Americans who collect photographs of their white colleagues and employers that, quote,
are ashamed to hang the pictures of distinguished friends or departed relatives would called for
readers to teach the children to revel and love our own heroes and heroines through portraits.
Yet going back to our first image in uncritical self admiration is not the goal is education of entire Hilson as it
satirically reprimands the woman who believes herself to be attractive would seems in keeping with contemporary social mores.
That cautioned against female Vanity Fair that the shift from the dialect expression of eight are handsome to the self-critical judgement.
That's not me. It's not merely a linguistic turn.
Instead, it signals the dropping of the minstrel mask when considering how one wants to be seen by oneself in this way.
Woods, in his illustrator, seem to chart the dialectics of representing black womanhood for their readers.
The author offers a judgement against the pride that the woman takes in her appearance,
reflecting the tension between the perception of herself as worthy of admiration and the social and cultural
forces that relentlessly denied that status in countless examples circulating throughout visual culture.
Black women were cast as racist, captures and mocked for their desire for a true representation of Victoria.
New Year's car from the 80s 90s, for example, presents a stereotypical mammy figure holding,
flailing black child on her lap as they sit before the photographer for their portrait.
They represent the antithesis of black. Stability and progress. As the caption satirically notes, they face is ever dear to me.
Images such as these speak to the ways that white culture producers used humour to refute the possibility of black subjects,
knowing how to properly present themselves as subjects as argued by Tanya Sheehan.
Such humour reflected white America's desire for a sense of superiority in the face of black emancipation.
Waves of immigration and further efforts to bring others into the national body.
With his assertion that primping the face for the photographic portrait was an essential part of black life,
countered the racist humour upon the assumption that the black SIDOR could never become the proper subjects of photography,
just as they could never be integrated into the concepts of a white national body.
Yet blacks subject could have been established within the realm of visual culture by the time of Woods production.
Images of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Sojourner Truth were in broad circulation,
countering the tropes and promoting their campaigns for abolitionism and self-determined ANC.
In fact, the seemingly indecorous declaration of eight handsome reverberates with an earlier historic
and potent query posed by truth in her Ain't I a Woman speech from 1854 to implode.
This rhetorical device to challenge the racist and sexist presumptions ascribed to black womanhood.
In this famous speech, she calls out the way that her physical strength and mental intelligence is equal to that attributed to men.
Truth then pivots describing her experience of motherhood,
the most hallowed expectation of 19th century womanhood, noting that unlike her white sisters,
she's denied the social graces of being lifted into a carriage, helped over a mud puddle or given the best of anything.
In short, she lays bare the systematic denial of black women's personhood, describing the liminal space in which she exists.
Her assertions are levelling force that resonate even into a contemporary moment.
Likewise, entire handsome emphatically proclaims the categorical denial of black women's lives for words in his audiences,
recasting the derogative structures,
the historic denial of selfhood to the present acuity of those engaged to performing black feminine respectability.
It models the conscious cultivation of activism.
Subject to incept activity that was expected from audiences who purchased and followed Woulds Council in the following close reading.
I look for the ways that these stretch she's expanded to allow modern black subjectivity to assert itself through the lens of the polite dissemblers.
Seven years after the publication of words its primer.
Another African-American author approached the topic of etiquette through moralising storytelling.
Silas Floyd, a graduate of Atlanta University and a contributor to the literary journal Voice of the Negro,
authored prescriptive Floyds Flowers Duty's and Beauty for Coloured Children,
working with illustrator John Henry Adams and unidentified photographers Floyd 10.
One hundred stories that range from models of useful lives to bad boys and girls and their troubles in this text.
Accompanying visuals were expected to play a connective role with readers not
only facilitating their internalisation of the Morell's communicated by FOID,
but also providing inspiring evidence of racial progress.
Heavily advertised in the voice of the Negro in Crisis magazine. The text represented a move towards inclusive city.
As one contemporary reviewer noted, quote,
The illustrations will serve to inculcate the young folks in the idea that coloured people can get their pictures in a book as well as white children,
and thereby stimulate race pride at a time when it will do the most good in the portrayals in this tax.
Not only shape the expectation that black children should be represented, but also how these representations should be read.
Authors such as Floyd sought to increase readers awareness of social typologies,
honing their skills to discern and further securing their subscription to the values espoused within the text.
Several additional strategies were employed to develop readers a cue with critical acuity.
Drawing upon an established trajectory for self-improvement, authors simultaneously provided an opportunity to look up at one.
Better's at the same time that they were looking down at one's inferiors, testifying to portraitist efficacy as a tool for social change.
In the short story, Rowdy Boy Floyd employed looking down visual strategy as a cautionary tale,
giving readers the opportunity to study negative types that were beyond saving.
The inclusion of such stereotypical images incited the readers desire to negate the image,
to nullify it by and acting the opposite, assuring readers that you can tell him whenever you see him.
Floyd directs the readers attention to certain marks that allude to his problematic disposition,
such as the cigarette hanging from his mouth, his cap cocked to the side and his hands stuffed in his trousers.
Indeed, the portrait of a rowdy boy depicts a young boy bearing all of these exterior signs.
Yet the altar goes beyond the mere description of physical,
creating a one to one system of attribution that enables the reader to decode the boy's character through the independence,
interdependence of text and image. The reader learns that the undesirable intangible traits are sauciness and impudence
are embodied through the boy SLAPP posture and directly confrontational gaze.
Armed with a specific evaluation of another, readers could then turn his evaluative means upon themselves in their own public performance.
The teaching them that occurs in these texts was not only about specific practises of self presentation or social decorum.
Rather, it could be argued that the real lessons offered were those of an evaluative measured looking for in this learning to lock.
One could determine how best present to protect oneself, using polite semblance to one's advantage.
For other chapters, strategies of disciplines are conveyed through constructing an us versus them lens through
which one could filter good behaviours from those that were less desirable portraits of
social types such as the loud girl who you see captioned here as blabbermouths and noisy sured
class distinction and privileged elite 19th century patriarchal conception of womanhood.
Yet the ambiguity of dissemblers allows a more nuanced reading.
The author's situates the readers in a streetcar, where they witness the sorrowful spectre of three girls misbehaving.
After describing their transgressions, which consist of giggling, wearing conspicuous and vivid clothing, including boys hats,
the author then details the ways in which the girls are inconsiderate to fellow passengers in the corresponding photograph.
Two of the three young women discussed are posed against a plane studio backdrop with no other contextual details.
They wear the affer me mentioned hats and loose blouses over long skirts.
The girl on her left has her arm around, the girl on the right in a vertically gestures with her hands, with open mouths.
They appear to be talking at the same time. Within the text, Floyd guides readers into participating in the evaluation of the girls,
stating that they were, quote, regarded with dislike, distrust and even disdain by the better class of people.
In fact, it's here that Floyd not only extended the controlling gaze of social judgement to empower readers,
but also determines whose judgement is to be the most valued that of the better class of people.
In practise, such discernment becomes a qualifier of the reader.
If one looks correctly, with disdain upon the style, address and manners exhibited by these young women,
then surely one must belong to quote the people of refinement who will not associate with low girls.
And thus Floyd and other authors who employ this approach not only codified the behaviour and appearance of others,
they also sought to control their readers conception of self-worth and class ambitions, relying upon the disciplinary deterrent of shame.
The author counsels the reader that if the loud girl was self-aware, she would view herself as a sorry object.
In her insightful study of nineteenth century black girlhood, a right contextualises Floyds, harsh judgement of the girls,
good time and camaraderie against the reality of their own ability to rape and sexual abuse at the hands of white men by attracting attention.
The girls, quote, would be perceived as not caring about the value and safety of their own bodies
and thereby became willing participants in any violence inflicted on their bodies.
Yet the depiction of the girls behaviour is assertive, collective and self-absorbed in a protective way that seemingly contradicts the text.
Importantly, they are not being depicted in public space.
Rather, they sit together in a bench in the intimacy of a photographic studio removed from the public sphere.
They have dropped Mascot Dissemblers to enjoy their affection for one another, offering an alternative model.
Perhaps readers could look to these portraits of young women and imagine what Cydia Hartman
scholars City Hartman calls a wayward moment where one was conscious of the expectations.
Yet deliberately acting in defiance.
In this way, the photograph demonstrates the girl's own autonomy to determine what circumstances necessitate the performance of the plight for Floyd.
However, it's not about the one individual transgression.
Instead, he compels his readers to understand that the judgement and missions inflicted on these black girls threaten all black girls.
By doing so, the authors shores the message of his social,
social responsibility and collective racial identity that runs throughout the text, collectivity and celebration.
Also motivated the visualisation of the New Negro, a social construct launched by Booker T. Washington,
Fanni Barrier, Williams and several other black intellectuals.
The promise of the new influenced illustrator John Henry Adams to write and illustrate an article for The Voice of the Negro,
a literary magazine published by Atlanta University on the character and appearance of the new Negro man.
According to Adams, the new Negro man's character was determined by contemporary intellectual discourse and career achievement,
rather than behavioural prescriptions.
Adams fully identified his male subjects by First and Lessoning position, each as an inspiring individual rather than a general social type.
There is fighting. Adam characterises his co-worker, editor Jesse Max Barber, as studious, confident and capable of working through,
quote, the awkward and oftentime ugly circumstances of racial prejudice.
And in the corresponding portrait Barbours depicted seated in elegantly carved chair reading at his desk, dressed formally in a three piece suit,
Barbara concentrates on the open book before him and his poise, his head and hand quotes from the most contemplated of thinkers.
It is in keeping with the captions that relay that he is a very close student of current economic and sociological questions.
The article leads with a photographic portrait of the artist,
as if he wanted to ensure a sort of objectivity in the representation of his own desires,
certifying that was truly representative of the real and unique romance.
In the accompanying caption, Adam quotes the Atlanta Constitution's proclamation of his genius,
letting readers know that modesty is not a required virtue for men.
Inspired by his studies with Dubois, Adam references the sociologist Theory of Double Consciousness,
recently published in Souls of Black Folk, writing that the new Negro man has,
quote, reasonable understanding of what it actually costs of human effort to be a man
and at the same time a Negro that allows him to rise above the newspapers.
And evil men who paint the new Negro out of pigments of senseless antipathy and call
him a brute allows us to seek to revert to the cast of manhood into a cowardly,
cringing, wilful serfdom. And quote, The author counsels his ability to protect himself and others and relies upon the cultivation of an inner life,
imagining how he wants to be perceived. And then he can willed that into being through his writing and through portraiture.
It seems that Adams earlier work not only inspired by many lessons for its flowers,
it also reinforced the efficacy of using the image proper to represent the proper image.
Further, this representation from the physical features of the individual's representative to the mental image of the race.
Collectively, prescriptive literature's emphasis on seeing in consciousness of how one is being seen
significantly contributed to the possibilities that one could have imagined by readers.
At the same time, it sought to constrict its adherence behaviours.
Historian Michelle Mitchell notes that those who consumed prescriptive texts were most likely to be aspiring class,
including self schooled strivers, graduates of colleges and normal schools.
But the audiences of newspapers were far more diverse, making it a far more influential primer.
By 1919, the national circulation of the Chicago Defender reached an impressive two hundred and thirty thousand copies.
Though founder and editor Robert Abbott has used his paper to inspire Southern migrants to make their way to Chicago,
the rapid population growth and the reality of racially restrictive covenants
led many to be anxious about the impact of new migrants on the city's social,
political and economic life. Abbott, a graduate of Hampton University, was especially concerned that new arrivals conform to social norms and manners.
Abbott imagined the defender to be a migrants book of dreams and etiquette due to its nixing reports on employment opportunities,
advertisements for consumer products and editorial conduct advice.
Abbott frequently included counsel for newly arrived to ensure that they did not continue to humiliate, quote,
all of the respectable classes of coloured citizens, unquote, and to give their enemies grounds for complaint.
In his 19 17 editorial things that should be considered,
Abbott's note the disparity between white and black migrants, though both came to Chicago for work.
With an all the similar ignorance of laws and customs, the save for the maintenance of health and sobriety and morality amongst people in general.
And it was only the black migrants who faced harsh criticism and violence for their transgressions.
He goes on to list twenty one points of prescription raising, ranging from, quote,
don't appear in Streeton or dust caps and dirty aprons and ragged clothes and quote, too, don't act discourteously to other people in public places.
All of Abbott's points emphasise the performance of the play in the public eye as a means of disarming what he termed,
quote, those who are endeavouring to discredit our race.
And in addition to publishing news stories regarding progress, columns on etiquette and promoting political engagement,
Abbott also directed his editorial cartoonists to provide a single panel corrective that admonish those who engaged in unacceptable behaviours.
For nearly five years, Leslie and Rogers and then Daniel Day visualise various transgressions of the Ill-mannered,
making their advice acceptable to all as illustrator, as the illustrator.
A day noted, quote, People can see cartoons who cannot or do not.
The time to read and he said there's no profession that places its members in the public limelight any quicker than the art of cartooning.
They not only reflect to affect social conditions, but also materially influence the course of political and national affairs.
Thus, the charge to, quote, reform character and manage the behaviour of the black masses,
unquote, could not be left illustrations and photographs encountered in books.
The directness of the cartoon titled People We Could Get Along Without broad evaluative looking in class,
divisiveness of etiquette into a populous form. The surreal work,
much like instalments from published and conduct manuals with weekly topics ranging
from what is appropriate to wear in public to adopting a Protestant work ethic.
In some cases, it seems that Rogers and De directly consulted Woods are Floyds Books as their concerns mirror one another.
In a frame that appeared in 1931,
audiences saw blabbermouth and noisy girls from Floyds Flowers continuing their disturbing behaviours on elevated cars as prim women.
And similarly,
the rowdy boy carries his antics into a young adulthood and was counselled to end his idle gossip and employ his mind in useful pursuits,
equipping himself to assume the duties of citizenship. As in so many of his conduct manuals and emphasis on collective judgement prevails,
accompanying captions related loitering on foot stoop stoops causes the entire race to suffer there.
I saw their portraits of offending types are largely set in the public sphere and emphasise a collective responsibility for representing the race.
Despite the stirring corrections de. Rendered his folks with a visual code associated with dignity,
imbuing them with the potential of assimilating into their urban context and becoming part of our evolving new Negro.
The collective identity that informed the newly privileged racial pride and a sense that
the accomplishments of the extraordinary could influence the lives of the ordinary.
This shared perspective paved the way for the aspirations of the individual, following the mandates for self understanding,
self direction, self respect, self dependence and self-expression found in the prescriptive literature from the era,
the formation and subsequent negotiation of contact literature and all of its
forms influenced the visual portrayal of African-American subjectivity texts,
illustrations, photographs and cartoons delivered in a wide array of visual strategies.
Consider when, when crafting both public and private personal identity.
Dramatic shifts in the dissemination of such media corresponded with migration, urbanisation of black populations,
providing opportunities to fashion and refashion one's likeness,
learning how to look in different ways within the racist infrastructure of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Digital culture is perhaps the most important contribution of prescriptive literature as
it is established a platform of self-possession that had been denied to black subjects.
And if citizenship was contingent upon recognition from others, as it was imperative to develop a shared process of identification.
And as a unit example seen in this lecture,
attests to the fierce resolve that black individuals and institutions invested in achieving social equality for themselves and others.
This strategy of looking to build portraits of individuals and social types provided possibilities for imagining social progress,
in particular the tactic of using specific characteristics of the individuals to represent the larger character.
The race will prove to have a lasting impact. As social progressives will adopt and employ it for the assimilation of immigrants to America,
seeking to reform a national perception of African-Americans, the deliverers of the proper image helped to form the image proper constricting.
At the same time that it created pathways for citizenship.
In this respect, our regard for the Obama portraits reflects this complicated history, which I will continue to examine in next week's lectures.
Thank you so very much and I look forward to your questions. Hello again.
Thank you so much, Amy. That was absolutely fascinating.
Such incredible primary archival material, but also telling a really interesting you use it to tell a really interesting story.
So very bits. I was really kind of blown away by what was the what you said about the Woods photograph,
the photograph of Woods himself on the frontispiece that looks at us.
And of course, an image that looks at you, particularly photograph has a certain kind of power.
But, you know, the idea that this had a very particular kind of meaning, pure kind of significance in the day.
I thought that was really, really interesting. And also the rowdy boy looking at us as well.
So we have various questions coming in. But I will try to keep track of.
I wanted to start by asking you, you were saying something really interesting with a photograph of the loud girls in the studio,
the two girls, two young women talking to each other.
You said something about dissembling or dissembling. So I wondered if you might just say a little bit more about that.
How do you how does that work in that image here? I'm drawing on the scholarship of Darlene Clark Hine and basically Shubert's report,
this theory that the culture of assemblance relies on strategies of invisibility in secrecy that are a means of achieving an interior autonomy,
particularly employed by black women. So it's basically with this idea that you are putting a one face forward,
but you might have an entirely different sense of yourself that they are not privy to.
So it's that kind of sense of control within and using the polite to, you know, effect.
But at the same time, having an entirely different sense of yourself in self-control.
Interesting. So then the photograph becomes very complicated because they may be withholding something from the photographer.
And then the photo ends up in a book where the photo is asked also then to mean something else.
And then imagine also in one way, you're being counselled to look at this in a schats, you know, kind of a figure finger wagging,
which what if you looked at it in a kind of amazed way and you're like, oh, they're having such a good time.
And yes, I be engaged in the same way. So I think that that's the key thing, is that the individual may look one way, but definitely feel another way.
And I think that kind of opens up that space. And then especially, again, we can look to Darlene Clark Hine to kind of articulate this in some way.
But said Hartman, likewise is forward this idea in Shires.
Another scholar that I would cite that likewise kind of again thinks to this idea of black women's interiority versus
their exterior already and the social circumstances that they were always under pressure to perform in that way.
Fascinating. Thanks. We also have questions about, I suppose, gender.
So the be in the woods to a.
Handsome is about a woman thinking that she's making herself attractive and then seeing the photograph and not being so sure.
And then the racist New York need New Year's Day card is also about a woman and child who Hosie.
So I suppose I wondered if you might say a little bit more about how gender plays zero or how modes of behaviour are different.
Kinds of behaviour are seen as being bad both by people like Woods, but also by racists who are making this kind of New Year's cards are different.
Kinds of behaviour are seen as bad depending on the gender of who is purportedly behaving badly.
It's also like the gossip thing, right? Is a classically gossiping, being noisy, talking too much is a classically gendered attack on women.
Right. Lots of couples fight and think you conform to a kind of Victorian cult of true womanhood.
We're expecting women to be pious and to be modest and to not have a kind of cultivated of
a public self and certainly not have the kind of intellectual opportunities or pursuits.
And so when we see the representation of black women imagining themselves as beautiful.
This is completely kind of countered. And that's actually where the title of my book comes from.
There was a newspaper that I was reading and the author was kind of decrying the fact
that there were no representations of African-American women who were beautiful,
who were fluent, who are accomplished. And all you saw were, again, people who were not of noteworthy character,
people who were buffoons, people who were criminalised or at least represented in that way.
And so this kind of will to counter that, I think is one of the things that I'm going to explore significantly next week,
where we'll see, especially with the advent of African-American beauty culture, there will be the celebration of black women's presence.
Physically, we will see the kind of contests that will be organised where different women will submit their photos.
And there's really this kind of counter to that particular gendered refusal.
And I didn't have the opportunity to share it in this discourse.
But John Henry Adams also depicts the new Negro woman, and he definitely really follows a kind of Victorian modest performance.
And actually, even in Floyds, he counters his presentation of the loud blabbermouth girls with modest to quiet girl.
So clearly there is, you know,
absolutely these kind of standards and expectations that are both raised and also very much gendered in throughout the text.
Good. Thank you. So we have a question here that asks if you could elaborate on the laws restricting direct eye contact.
And was that explicitly discussed in texts like words?
Did they talk about who it was like? Look at who was in property, did not profitable?
It's funny. Words actually directly addresses it.
So he's got this one chapter where he goes into this idea of the old Negro and the new Negro and the old Negro as he depicts him.
I almost wish I had the image. Here is someone who does not greet people on the street in a straightforward way, is kind of fumbling and awkward,
whereas the new Negro looks white people specifically would says this straight in the eye and
greets them in a how do you know when a poor kind of cleaning space on the sidewalk as well.
So it's really interesting.
Again, Woods Council is so on the verge to know where, again, you have these elements that are derogatory and stereotypical.
But you also have this kind of amazing agency and push that goes across that.
And this is true, too, in a variety of the other sources that I cited.
So definitely the authors. African-American authors were negotiating these conventions.
And next week, I'll talk a bit about that, especially in regards to this idea of there being a Jim Crow etiquette.
Some of it which was definitely prescribed in and legislated.
Other is going to be much more around convention and expectation.
And again, if we look to the history of the United States,
all of the kind of horrific violence that continues is so much based again on this idea of looking how he looked at me or I looked at her.
There's so much power in that social change.
And so I think, again, that's one of the key things that we look to the early representations of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.
They are looking to their respective audiences in a way that is, again, very commanding.
And honestly, some people would even think accusatory. Fascinating.
Thank you. So we have another question. It gets to the heart in some ways of what you've been talking about, which is so the question is,
this person is interested in the relationship between self representation and self-determination.
And I wonder if you could speak more about substituting the control of white supremacy for self control.
Which I take to mean what? How is it that making images that on some levels repeat white supremacist racist tropes?
What's involved in taking that back and making it meaningful for oneself?
I think that there are a couple things to consider here.
In regards to how works in some ways absorbed the literature that was coming from the abolitionist movement.
And there is this idea of what constitutes freedom.
Who can grant that? How is it represented?
Especially, again, if we think about the kind of elements around the developed visual elements around the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863.
And again, I'm drawing here from Cydia Hartmann's work significantly because in some way she argues that there is
no ability to represent freedom or self-determination because you have it and if it is therefore denied,
are granted to you. It is absolutely not being represented or experienced in the way that it extends in terms of humanity.
And I think that when we look at to some of these councils, there's a kind of back and forth and especially through the work of DBP Dubois,
where he sees this kind of negativity and it becomes internalised and you start to, you know, essentially see this.
So how can you counter and look at yourself in a different way with different lens?
And this is one of the projects that he then really spends the rest of his life doing everything from that.
Nineteen hundred amazing albums that he assembles to subsequently the ways that he edits Crisis magazine to the ways again,
that he involves himself in a debate symposium around how a Negro should be portrayed in Crisis magazine in 1926.
So there's definitely this kind of awareness of visuality and imagining controlling that visuality.
And to that end,
to what I'd like to expound a little bit on is the fact that during this time period we have a massive expansion of African American media.
So we have not only the Chicago Defender, as I mentioned,
but we have numerous expounding through the images through the American Negro Associated Press that is established by Clyde Burnett.
What that means, then, is that photographers can start to feed their images to a variety of newspapers.
And so there's just a shift in visuality to see the black subject represented not only in the family portrait,
but to actually see them then mediated in newspapers, cereal magazines.
And we like to think that, oh, you know, Ebony is the first African-American illustrated magazine and it's absolutely not.
There are so many that through this research that I've been doing, I've been able to discover some of them we know well,
like the Crisis magazine, which was published by the NAACP or The Messenger, which was published by the Urban League.
But there are also of magazines such as The Champion Reflexes.
My favourite one of my absolute favourites of my own is called Heebie Jeebies and Half Century.
They're phenomenally beautifully illustrated. So many photographs and different images are coming from this time period.
And illustrators likewise to this is the golden era, so to speak.
So I think that seeing yourself and being represented by someone that you identify with really mattered during this time period.
And it's very much intended to be a kind of counterpoint, I think, to white supremacy that was engaged in,
again, trying to reify itself and keep hold of its economic, social and cultural capital.
Thank you. We have another question. This is someone who is mentioned, France Fanon, who had come into my mind,
also pointing out that in black skin, white masks, Bannon notes that, quote, I don't regret it.
I put it in quotes.
A man who has a language, a man who has a language, consequently possesses the world express and implied by the language in question.
And I think you've kind of you've kind of been answering this is how might this apply to portray here where the
adoption of the length of the language of white portrayed confirms confers a form of whiteness on the black subject?
That's a great question. Absolutely. I think one of the key things to remember is yes.
When we look at the artists who were classically trained like John Henry Adams, we see him in almost like a point to point following it.
In fact, actually, in the new Negro woman, he generates an African-American Gibson girl.
And so he very much is engaged in a white language.
But then to counter fennel and to counter that thinking, well, then what is a black language and who subsequently can generate that?
And how is it that the two are uniquely in separate?
Instead, I think as many scholars have said, is if we keep these binaries as absolute,
we're not going to come to an understanding how they impact, reinforce and create one another.
So very much if we think about blackness, we are in fact ascribing whiteness and the two are in this constant discourse.
And this is better in my book.
Things get very complicated in Chapter three because I try to, you know, untangle them, but actually show how interdependent they really are.
And especially when we move to start to add even further ethnicities into our portraiture and portrayals,
discussions through immigration, where we start to think about again, you know,
the Italians and and likewise Slovaks and how race and ethnicity at this point were very
fluidly discussed and not discerned in the same particularities that we tried to pass out.
So I think to go back to the Finnane idea is, you know, very much like, yes,
if you were given this image and you were still using those same tools, you perhaps have not evolved around it.
But when my question is, is when do we how do we evolve?
Is it when we instead take the tools as myriad as they are and utilise them and have us kind of self presentation and self-determination?
And when we look at, for example, the images of the Obamas,
isn't that absolutely one of the things that's done that isn't that so much the subversive practise,
especially that is associated with Candy Whiley, where he's taking absolutely.
You know, the tools of the white man on a new DVD and using them?
Absolutely. In this most masterful and profound way where he disrupts the canon and he again places the black subject face forward.
And then we have to subsequently have as viewers that kind of dialogue with ourselves.
Good. Fascinating.
We did have quite a few questions, actually, about questions that were bringing us forward to the contemporary moment, I think, around it.
Obama and Michelle portraits.
So people asking questions along the lines of how does the use of portraits, housing support, rights and image change over the.
And how has Michelle Obama's portrayed Michelle?
The idea, I guess, on the image of Michelle shaped the recent history of representation in this area.
That's a big question. I mean, maybe you're gonna get to this in later lectures or not.
I don't know if you want to try to grow up with it. It is a very big area to be get to be quite profound.
And one of the things I think that draws me to Amy Childs first is that she's interested in these politics of respectability.
This kind of idea of how do you position the individual, but also then how an individual shifts from not just representing themselves,
but to becoming an archetype, you know, how is it that, again, in particular, Michelle Obama's image has done this in effect?
Certainly the fact that Cheryl uses Foresi and that she is bringing.
Yes. Into more the idea of imaging and not just keeping it specific to the individual, but obviously we all recognise the individual there, too.
And in that same way, the individual, you know, who is extraordinary can then therefore inspire those of us who are more ordinary.
And I think that that's one of the key things in particular that Michelle Obama has
been incredibly savvy about in building her own representation and owning that.
I mean, certainly from her profound book to the recent Netflix series becoming all of this is very much about
that mode of empowerment and thinking again about how you can seise your image and utilise it again,
not just for yourself and your own ambitions, but also imagine how your act of doing that models that kind of behaviour and inspires others.
No, she has. I think she's been very successful in doing that.
And when Cesar from time to time and gets a sense of the forces that are fighting and fighting against that or against which she has had to fight this
racist Satur racist caricatures of her elected officials from whichever state it was saying something about her appearance compared to Trump's wife.
Yeah. So there's a whole kind of weight of tradition still out there that needs to be needs to be contested.
We have another very big subject of discussion that people have been raising,
which is about social media and how portray a self-portrait, your the ability to represent one's self.
Might be different now compared to an earlier moment.
Again, as I said, it's a very big kind of question. I don't know if you have things that you would like to say about that.
Well, it's really interesting because there's a lot of people riding on this selfie and thinking about what does it mean.
And for me, it's always been a kind of negotiation. It's, you know, in one way, yes.
Gratuitous and celebratory. And all of that can do wonders for one's ego if you get enough likes.
And also on the other end can make a person feel disparaged and terrible.
And I think that that's actually the emotional value and cultural capital of the portrait that we need to come to terms with.
And I think it's that kind of thinking about these medias as negotiating the ethics of
imaging and where and how you want to see yourself and how you want yourself to be portrayed.
And in one way, it's also much more facile now. Right. Because we don't have to go to the studio portraits to get one done.
You can just use our iPhones and it's kind of endless. And it's that kind of, I think,
ubiquity that likewise is really of great interest to me in regards to thinking about wanting
to have a fluidity and not only being defined in one particular point in time and era,
but to have, again, this kind of continuingly sense of yourself is evolving potentially in gross and potentially, you know,
just in style than an expression of that, I think is really what's facilitated by these formats and by our constant self imaging.
But again, I don't think it's always as all the arguing throughout the articles.
It's not just a kind of idea of how you see yourself. It's also how that self is seen by others.
And how can you try to get control over that? And how can you hate to have that moment of negotiation where it feels like you belong?
Glued. We have one last question. I think we maybe have time for this.
We're just about out of time. And it is one that you might have.
You might have a very interesting perspective on as an American who has been here for a bit in England for a bit.
Which is. What do you make relatedly, Michelle Obama?
I think what you make of the representation of Meghan Markle. Well, by no means am I an expert.
Can I have my next article right?
I said that's from next order. I don't know. I certainly have admired her sense of fashion.
I did not want her series suit. So I can't really speak to her prior career or evaluate her as an actress.
But I loved the spectacle. That was very much part of the wedding in the way that people seem to take some joy in that.
I was concerned when I started to speak with people about the questions of racism and
whether they read her as African-American or just the plurality or being multiracial.
And I really don't know that I have anything that I can say that somehow illuminates further the
discrimination and the subsequent loss that I think has been part of her experience here in in the U.K.
I certainly had a variety of interesting conversations around race and racism here.
I was really fortunate immediately to meet with Dr. Julius Smith when I was here, and we hosted a question around what constitutes black art.
Here it was to college, which was a great workshop. And the students were really keen to have these kind of conversations.
And likewise, we hope to reorganise a symposium around the idea of the average hope,
a concept that puts put forth by Mr. Thompson and Huey Cocklin in collaboration with the cartel.
But as you know, it had to be cancelled because of our current pandemic.
Yes, we hope postponed, not cancelled. Right. So we are very much hoping it will still happen.
I hope so. OK. So thank you very much. Said it's been a really fascinating debate and a wonderful first lecture.
We are, I'm afraid, out of time. But thanks again to Amy for a really wonderfully fascinating lecture.
It's very thought provoking, really rich material.
And I'm very much looking forward to the next instalment thanks to offer to Torch for hosting our event tonight.
And a big thank you also to everyone out there for watching and for submitting such interesting questions.
I think we've covered a lot of them. I think there are probably some we've missed. So sorry that we haven't had time to answer everything.
The conversation is, of course, as we know, not over. Amy, we'll be exploring related issues in the lectures to follow.
So please do join us again for next week's event, the second in the Tara lecture series,
which will take place on Monday, the 1st of June at five p.m. U.K. time.
And we will be joined next week by her collaborator on set with pictures, Deborah Willis,
who is university professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the British School of the Arts at New York University.
So that's something to look forward to for next week. Again, we very much hope you will be able to join us.
And thanks again for watching day watching today and goodbye for now.