The 2022 Pembroke Center Research Roundtable, "Color Crossings: Race, Affect, Aesthetics," considered color’s metaphorical, linguistic, philosophical, historical, perceptual and practical resonances at the crossroads of critical race theory and color theory.

In drawing together these distinct but overlapping discourses, we ask how global histories of race, gender, sex and class are connected to structures of knowledge and power that are ordered by color. To begin to answer these questions, we turn to the work of artists, writers and other creators of color and explore how their art engages color’s aesthetic and affective affordances. We see color as a transgressive means of expression when employed by people of color, one with the potential to challenge the fixity of racial hierarchies and subvert hegemonic structures.

This roundtable, led by Postdoctoral Fellows Erica Kanesaka, Bernabe Mendoza, and Allison Puglisi, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies Maria De Simone, represented the culmination of the year-long Pembroke Center research seminar, “Color,” convened by Professor Leslie Bostrom (Art) and Professor Evelyn Lincoln (Art History).

Friday, April 22, 2022

5:00-7:00 p.m. Keynote Artist/Scholar Talk

Kareem Khubchandani, Tufts University

"The Auntology of the Senses: More Ways to be an Aunty"

Saturday, April 23, 2022 

10:00-11:00 a.m.

Tina Post, University of Chicago

“On Blackness as Race and Hue”

Moderator: Maria De Simone
 

11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Vanatta Ford, Williams College

“Color Coded: Analyzing Colorist Rhetoric in Hip Hop Music”

Moderator: Bernabe Mendoza
 

1:30-2:30 p.m.

Anna Storti, Duke University

“Aesthetic Motives: The Femme Alter Ego and Her Retribution”

Moderator: Erica Kanesaka
 

2:45-3:45 p.m. 

Tao Leigh Goffe, Cornell University

“Choreography in the Dark”

Moderator: Allison Puglisi
 

3:45-4:15 p.m. 

Open discussion and closing remarks

Event Program