Jim Crow, Recontextualized, 1870-1930

Session will present: In-Person

Jim Crow, Recontextualized, 1870-1930

What merit is there in researching racialized pictures of the past? Should not the surfeit of racially demeaning images from the Jim Crow era be best left in archives and collections, tucked away from sight? From the years 1870 to 1930, racialized themes flooded the Western visual world, from comic journals to fine art circles. Appearing in drawings, prints, photographs, stereographs, paintings, collectibles, and various other media, themes of the racial inferiority of non-whites saturated the visual culture of the West, palliating fears that white dominance may wane. This session proposes that racialized images of the Jim Crow era are worth our scrutiny, precisely because their effects remain part of a transatlantic collective memory that distorts perceptions of others and the self. The Jim Crow image traumatizes even if it is not seen. This session calls for papers from art historians and artists who engage with recontextualizing the racialized image from the years 1870-1930 in Western culture. Recontextualization may be understood through critical and theoretical research, such as whiteness studies, critical race theory, Black history, and other theoretical models, or by reclaiming exclusionary histories for investigation in art practice. Research into Jim Crow era imagery presents an opportunity for the context of the past and the recontextualized of present inquiry to meet through a joint session of art historians and artists.


Field(s) of Study:
Time Period: Nineteenth Century
Time Period: Twentieth Century
Topics: African American
Topics: Race/Ethnicity
Theory / Practice: Visual Studies


Chair:
Melody D. Davis, Russell Sage College

Abstract Submissions Closed