Each year, the VLC identifies a topic of urgency and resonance that becomes the subject of various public programs – Speculating on Change is the annual theme for 2009-2010, in response to the Obama call for “change we can believe in.” The discussions probe perceptions, descriptions, measurements, and meanings of change that inform collective action, whether political, scientific, or cultural. Speculating on Change also entails projection, prognosis and risk, and embodies the fluid and divergent time space continuum of contemporary existence. The programs are tied to the previous cycle on democracy as an eternally deferred state. Both program cycles received the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Miriam Petty Presentation – Synopsis
Petty’s remarks provide some historical context for D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, in terms of its sweeping and enduring cultural significance. She will also explore the way in which the visual and ideological representation of Black/mulatto women in The Birth of a Nation is explicitly countered and revised by Oscar Micheaux in his 1920 film Within Our Gates.
In D.W. Griffith’s…
Posted on September 20, 2009
Suggested Reading
Colloquium participants submitted this list of suggested readings to create a context for the discussion:
Blackmon, Douglas. Slavery By Another Name. Anchor Books, 2008.
Blight, David. “Fifty Years of Freedom and Reunion” in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Harvard University Press, 2001.
Wallace, Michele. “The Good Lynching and The Birth of a Nation: Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow,”…
Posted on September 20, 2009
Stephanie Rothenberg, 10 Steps To Your Own Sweatshop
Posted on September 23, 2009
Watch past programs
