Nell Painter

Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University

November 7, 2013 — 4:10 PM
International House Auditorium — 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley

Add to Google Calendar 11/07/2013 4:10 PM 11/07/2013 6:00 PM America/Los_Angeles Why White People Are Called ‘Caucasian’ (Illustrated)

About the Lecture Nell Painter’s lecture will combine the discursive meanings of scholarship with the visual meaning of painting, to answer, literally, why white people are called ‘Caucasian,’ what that looks like, and how they all relate to our ideas … Continued

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About the Lecture

Nell Painter’s lecture will combine the discursive meanings of scholarship with the visual meaning of painting, to answer, literally, why white people are called ‘Caucasian,’ what that looks like, and how they all relate to our ideas about personal beauty.

About Nell Painter

An influential and prolific historian, Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, where she chaired the African-American Studies Program during1997-2000.  She is author of seven books and many other scholarly writings on a wide range of topics in American history.  Her latest book, The History of White People, appeared to critical acclaim in 2010. Her distinction in the field has been recognized with Guggenheim and numerous other fellowships; honorary degrees awarded by Yale, Wesleyan, Dartmouth and SUNY-New Paltz; the highest alumni/ae award given to Harvard University’s doctoral graduates; and the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the Southern History Association.

Painter is also a professional artist, striving, she has written, to engage archives of images and texts, juxtaposing these materials so as to enable the viewer to construct a sense of visual meaning to combine the discursive meanings of scholarship with the visual meanings of painting.  As a university teacher and mentor to younger scholars, she states, she sought to include the experiences of African Americans, women and the working class within the narratives of U.S. history. Her recent project, entitled Odalisque Atlas, combines imagery dealing with issues of beauty, sex, and slavery that she discovered during research forThe History of White People.


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