Description:

Elizabeth J. Chin (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena) is an ethnographer and performer who writes on topics including capitalism, feminism, race, children as consumers, Michael Jackson and Katherine Dunham. She won national recognition for her undergraduate course “The Incredible Whiteness of Barbie,” and is the author of Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture. Her new book, My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries, is a provocative meditation on contemporary capitalism, life in the Marx family, and the limits of ethnography.

This talk is co-presented by the Departments of African American Studies and Anthropology; the Programs in American Studies, Asian American Studies, Critical Theory, and Gender and Sexuality Studies; the Black Arts Initiative; and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, as part of the Institute's 2016-2017 Debt Dialogue Series.

There is also a lunch talk with Dr. Chin on Friday, November 4 (12 noon) at 1819 Hinman, 3rd Floor (Asian American Studies office). Please RSVP to mjweis@northwestern.edu so we get an accurate count for food!