9/29 – Marie Grace Brown: “Finding Black Joy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”
Where do we find Black joy in the archive? How do we evaluate claims of interracial affection or friendship made by white imperialists? Using case studies of servants, sex, and food, Marie Grace Brown addresses these questions and more in her examination of everyday life in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. She argues that the search for Black joy—whether we find it or not—is a new, critical responsibility for today’s racially conscious scholars.
Marie Grace Brown (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2012) is a cultural historian of the Modern Middle East with a special interest in questions of intimacy, gender, empire, and the body as historical text. Her award-winning book, Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017), traces gestures, intimacies, and adornment to give a history of northern Sudanese women’s lives under imperial rule. Brown’s second book-length project, “A World of Color: Adventures in Romance in Imperial Sudan,” continues the exploration of the relationship between bodies and imperial power. Brown’s work has been supported by grants from the American Association of University Women, the Social Science Research Council, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
https://www.facebook.com/events/631011701938501
Thursday, September 29 at 5 PM:
Sawyer Seminar “Race and the Middle East North Africa” Lecture
Skylight Room, GC CUNY (365 5th Avenue, New York NY 10016)