Description:

The Critical Theory Cluster and Black Arts Consortium presents a graduate workshop on new writing:

Join us for a pre-publication book workshop with Sampada Aranke (Assistant Professor, Art History, Theory, Criticism Department, School of the Art Institute Chicago)

Death’s Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power

November 16, 2020
1pm – 3pm CST
To register for the virtual event, please contact Sarah Peters (sarah.mcginley@northwestern.edu)

To receive workshop readings, please contact Ryan Bince (rlbince@u.northwestern.edu). Please note, it is suggested to read the introduction and one chapter of choice.

The workshop will be chaired by Huey Copeland (Arthur Andersen Teaching and Research Professor, Art History, Northwestern; Andrew W. Mellon Professor, National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.).

Featuring comments from graduate students Harrison Graves (English, African American Studies, Critical Theory), æryka hollis o’neil (African American Studies, Documentary Media MFA program, Critical Theory) and Jordan Mulkey (African American Studies, Critical Theory). 

Response by Alexander Weheliye (Professor, African American Studies, Northwestern).

Death’s Futurity analyzes how radical Black power movements in the U.S. rhetorically and visually imagined death as a generative means towards political liberation in ways that responded to state-sanctioned violence during the Black Power era. Mobilizing archival findings that have never been published, Aranke critically analyzes the ephemera surrounding the murders of three Black Panther Party members—Lil’ Bobby Hutton, Fred Hampton, and George Jackson—between 1968 and 1971. These spectacularized murders mark a transition from Black Power to prison abolition. In order to track this historical and theoretical shift, Aranke focuses on how Black radicals transformed these state-sanctioned murders into opportunities to engage political action, primarily through the use of innovative compositional techniques that draw on a broader Black Art Historical canon.

Sponsored by the Critical Theory Cluster
Co-Sponsored by Weinberg College Dean's Collective Funds for Critical Race Studies and Black Arts Consortium.