Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture
Tuesday 02 February, 2016
6 - 8pm, $0/Rsvp
NYU, The Humanities Initiative
20 Cooper Square, Floor 5
Join us for a conversation about Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture. Reviewing exemplary instances of visual art, music, cinema, theater, and literature, Phillip Brian Harper’s new book argues that there are limits to the social-critical efficacy of realist representation, and posits non-realist abstractionist aesthetics as a powerful alternative mode of African-Americanist critique.
Phillip Brian Harper
Remarque Professor of Literature, Departments of Social and Cultural Analysis, English, NYU
Saidiya Hartman
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Anne Anlin Cheng
Professor of English and African American Studies, Princeton University
Moderator:
Sonya Posmentier
Assistant Professor of English, NYU