SX Blog

Black Portraiture[s] IV: The Color of Silence - Call for Papers / Call for Proposals

Event Timing: March 15-17, 2018.
Event Address: Havana, Cuba

BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] IV: The Color of Silence is the eighth conference in a series of conversations about imaging the black body. We invite artists, activists, and scholars to reflect on the visual expressions of national imaginaries and political ideologies that negate racial differences and render black subjects invisible. Such ideologies are prevalent in Latin America and the Caribbean, where metaphors of mixture (mestizaje or mestiçagem) and racial harmony ignore inequality and discrimination. Similar formulations are to be found elsewhere, however, as in republican France, or among proponents of a post-racial United States, or in references to a South African “rainbow nation”, or in Jamaica’s well-known “out of many, one people” motto. Presenters will engage a range of historical and contemporary topics such as biennales, exhibitions, movements, individual artists and collectives, art markets, politics, tourism, sites of memory, Afrofuturism, fashion, dance, music, film, art, and photography. We invite papers and panel proposals on relevant topics.

Deadline for submissions: September 15, 2017
Notice of acceptance: October 27, 2017

All proposals must be submitted through completion of this online form.

The conference will be held on Thursday through Saturday, March 15-17, 2018, in Havana, Cuba. As the status of the US/Cuba relations are in flux, more information about travel will be available when the new Administration's policies are enacted. We will keep you posted.

Please note that as with most academic conferences, we are unable to provide institutional funding for travel to Black Portraitures.

Black Portraiture[s] IV is a collaboration with the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Jeffrey DeLaurentis; Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University; New York University’s LaPietra Dialogues, Tisch School of the Arts, and the Institute for African American Affairs.

Please contact blackportraitures@gmail.com with questions.

Read more about Black Portraitures here.