This talk will explore聽the drawings, paintings, prints, 补苍诲听sculpture created by African American, African Caribbean, and Black British women and men, enslaved and free, living and working across the Black Diaspora over the centuries. Living and dying against a white racist backdrop that sought to destroy聽Black bodies and souls, they generated聽聽alternative聽art-making traditions聽and practices that constitute nothing less than聽鈥渄eclarations of independence.鈥澛燗s artists and activists, they work聽with every means necessary to image slavery and imagine freedom 补苍诲听not only to visualize back to white dominant systems of oppression but聽to carve out an alternative blueprint for freedom and usher in聽a new聽鈥渓exicon of liberation.鈥
Celeste-Marie Bernier聽is personal chair in English and professor of Black studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is also Co-Editor-in-Chief with Bevan Sewell of the聽Journal of American Studies聽published by聽Cambridge聽University Press. Bernier鈥檚 wide-ranging research encompasses聽the literatures, histories, politics, visual cultures, and philosophies of women, men, and children living in the African Diaspora over the centuries, and her published work reflects the breadth of her interests, including聽her single-authored聽books聽African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present听(2008),听Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination聽聽(2012; winner of the 2013 British Association for American Studies Book Prize and co-winner of the 2014 European American Studies Network Book Prize),聽Suffering and Sunset: World War I in the Art and Life of Horace Pippin聽(2015) (winner of a Terra Foundation International Publication Grant) 补苍诲听the forthcoming聽Stick to the Skin: Representing the Body, Memory and History in Fifty Years of African American and Black British聽Art (1965-2015). She is currently working on聽Living Parchments: Artistry and Authorship in the Life and Works of Frederick Douglass聽补苍诲听Struggle for Liberty: Frederick Douglass鈥檚 Family Letters, Speeches, Essays, 补苍诲听Photographs.