EVENT CANCELLED

We regret to announce the cancellation of this lecture, due to unforeseen circumstances. Thank you for your understanding. Please check our Events Page for future programming.

Myth, Religion, and Race: the Art of Harmonia Rosales Lecture Series

Harmonia Rosales has been accused of blasphemy and cultural appropriation. These accusations force an examination of a hierarchy of symbols and interpretations, allowing us to question which perspectives are considered normative or even superior when compared to others. What significance can we derive from critics' ability to negatively evaluate the racial and gendered aspects of Rosales’ work yet are unwilling to do the same with works by the “old masters”?

Vilna Bashi is the Osborn Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She is a sociologist and visual artist. Her scholarship theorizes about international migration, race and ethnicity and the dynamics of hierarchical socioeconomic structures both domestically and internationally. She has published several articles and books, including The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fictions into Ethnic Factions (Stanford, 2013), a comparative historical analysis of US ethnic groups’ racialization named to the Zora Canon, the top 100 books ever written by an African American woman. She is the 2020 recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award for scholarship in service to social justice. Bashi is currently at work on a memoir entitled Schooled, about her experiences with public school and higher education, and a related self-portrait series.