New Voices in Art History Lecture Series
Tanya Sheehan, "Photography under a Cloud: Race and Early Photographic Humor"
Monday, May 4, 7pm
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center, RISD
20 North Main Street
In this lecture Professor Sheehan critically examines how and why popular ideas about the photographic medium have intersected with anxieties about racial identity in America since the mid-nineteenth century. Through an analysis of satirical writings on photography, graphic illustrations of photographic practices, and comically staged photographs, she develops a model for taking early photographic humor seriously as a popular form of entertainment and as highly complex social commentary.
Tanya Sheehan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, where she teaches courses on art and science, race and representation, and the history of photography. She is the author of the forthcoming book, "Doctor Photo: The Medicine of Photography in American Culture" (Penn State University Press), which examines the cultural work of medical metaphors and models in nineteenth-century photographic discourse. Professor Sheehan has recently received research fellowships from the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and the American Antiquarian Society to support a second book project on racial jokes in early photographic humor.
The New Voices in Art History lecture series is sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture and the Division of Liberal Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design
No comments:
Post a Comment