05 Apr Selfhood on the Edge: African Photography at the Indian Ocean Crossroads Professor
Sandy Prita Meier (Art History, Wayne State University)
Thursday, April 5 / 5:00 PM
HSSB 1174
Located at the crossroads of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the port cities of the Swahili coast have been nodes of global connectivity for over two millennia. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, Western imperialism radically reconfigured East Africaʼs social, political and cultural networks. This talk explores the fundamental role of photography in remaking Swahili logics of personhood. It considers how the photograph, through its very materiality, circulated in and out of various registers of meaning in order to question normative ideas about the politics of globalism.
Sponsored by the Department of Black Studies, Center for Black Studies Research, Mbanefo Foundation Research Fund, African Studies Research Focus Group, the Department of English Hemispheric South/s Research Initiative, and the IHC.