Kim Hall, professor and director of the English department at Georgetown University, is giving a slide presentation on "Object into Object?: Some Thoughts on the Presence of Black Women in Early Modern Culture." This event, sponsored by the University of Rochester Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies, will begin at 4 p.m., Monday, Feb. 28, in the Gamble Room, 361 Rush Rhees Library on the University's River Campus.
Hall's lecture will address several political and theoretical concerns involved in looking at or for images of black people, especially women, in early modern culture. Focusing on these images, Hall will explore the tension created between the contemporary studies of "race" and "black presence." According to Hall, this lecture intends to "reveal important issues of black women's subjectivity in representation as well as in early modern culture and asks the question: how can one (or can one) read through the objectification of black people in this period?"
Hall's book Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England was named as an outstanding academic book for 1996. In addition, Hall has published several articles focusing on Shakespeare, theater history, visual culture, women writers, black feminist theory, food and material culture, pedagogy, and multiculturalism.
The event is free and open to the public.