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Blackness and Commercial Culture in Europe, 1850-1950
Location: The Council Room (K2.29, King’s Building),
Strand Campus, King's College London
Category: Conference
When: 6 July 2013
Contact: Jeff Bowersox ([log in to unmask])
Deadline for registration: Friday, 21 June (admission is free, but booking is essential)
For further information or to register for the event, please contact
[log in to unmask].
Between the mid-nineteeth and mid-twentieth centuries Europe was re-shaped by a significant confluence of developments. The continent reached the height of its global influence; the nation became a powerful organizing
principle; and ever larger numbers of people engaged in national and global affairs through mass politics and various encounters with the world. At the same time, Europe was re-made by the rise of an international commercial culture, shaped increasingly by
influences from the USA, that mediated the public’s engagement with the wider world and thereby provided a forum for producing and contesting such concepts as race, nation, and empire.
This symposium draws together an interdisciplinary range of scholars working on blackness in France, Germany, Denmark, Britain, Italy, and the United States. Presenters will explore the significance of national and imperial
boundaries as well as the role of various commercial media in building transnational perspectives on race, hegemonic and counter-cultural, that reached around the Atlantic world.
Programme
9:30-9:45 Registration and tea/coffee
9:45-10:00 Welcome and introduction
Jeff Bowersox and Erica Carter, King’s College London
10:00-11:15 Keynote Address
“Black France and the African Diaspora: National Identity and Transnational Vision”
Tyler Stovall, UC Berkeley
Chair/Commentator: Erica Carter, King’s College London
11:15-12:30 Commodifying Race, Gender, and Sexuality
“Racialized Hierarchies of Sexuality in Orientalist Cigarette Advertisements”
David Ciarlo, Colorado
“Scandinavian Human Exhibitions. Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the Turn of the Century”
Rikke Andreassen, Roskilde
Chair/Commentator: Alex Clarkson, King’s College London
12:30-1:45 Lunch
1:45-3:00 Blackness and Music
“Sophisticated Ladies: Adelaide Hall and Elisabeth Welch and the Integration of Black Music in Britain”
Neil Wynn, Gloucestershire
“‘Nel blu dipinto di blues’: African American Music in Italy, 1930-60”
Christian O’Connell, Gloucestershire
Chair/Commentator: Dan Matlin, King’s College London
3:00-3:15 Tea/coffee
3:15-5:00
Playing Politics
“Topsy in the Senate House: Alexander Crummell and Uncle Tom's Cabin”
Sarah Meer, Cambridge
“Transatlantic Black Radicalism in Britain: Old Print Media, Performance and Radical Ideas in the Work of Robert Wedderburn (c.1762 -1835?) and Henry Box Brown (c. 1815 - ?) and their Legacy”
Alan Rice, Central Lancashire
“‘Hair, the Musical’ and the Theatricalization of Race, Rock and Rebellion across the UK and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s”
Tavia Nyong’o, New York University
Chair/Commentator: Kevern Verney, Edge Hill
5:00-5:15 Concluding remarks
Jeff Bowersox, King’s College London
5:15-6:00 Wine reception
This event has been made possible through the generous support of the School of Arts & Humanities and the German Department at King’s College London.