The Windham-Campbell Lecture is a central feature of the annual Windham-Campbell Prize Festival and is delivered each year by a distinguished writer on the topic “Why I Write.” This year, Ghanaian poet and writer Kwame Dawes shares insights into his craft and creative process. The annual lectures are published in extended form by Yale University Press in its Why I Write series.
Samuel Johnson defined “spectacle” in 1755 as “a show; a gazing stock; anything exhibited to the view as eminently remarkable.” This exhibition will explore the range of spectacular shows that were offered to the fee-paying public in Georgian London, from exhibitions of paintings, to scientific demonstrations, to the display of wondrous animals.
European artists of the 17th through 19th centuries often depicted Black figures wearing pearl ornaments. The dialogue between racial and chromatic blackness paired visually with pearly luminescence resulted in a contrast that evoked notions of luxury, distant lands, and exoticized portrayals of Black bodies. Art historian and curator Adrienne Childs explores the complexities of the Black body that was subjugated and enslaved in one context yet used to showcase luxuries in another.
From Queen Elizabeth I to Harry Styles the legacy of pearls is a story about self-fashioning. Pearls feature prominently in many pictures of celebrated figures from the past. Worn as jewelry—as embellishments of the body and apparel, or embedded in the settings of precious objects—pearls illuminate ideas about beauty, power, and style.
Michael Willrich, Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University, will present on his new book “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.”
In concerts across Europe in the 1780s, the young Viennese virtuosa Maria Theresia Paradis made blindness visible, even audible. Her performances invited listeners and viewers primed by horror ballads and literary romance to experience her story of trauma and misfortune within the frame of fictional narratives of doomed innocence and victimized Gothic heroines.
Please join us for a panel of distinguished private collectors and print curators for lively conversation with about their interests, expertise, and adventures in building their collections of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British caricature and satiric prints.
The Yale Native American Cultural Center presents the third annual Indigenous Arts Night.
Celebrate music, visual art, dance, poetry, and more forms of creative imagination with Emcee Jairus Rhoades.
Richard Deming, Senior Lecturer in English and Director of Creative Writing, will discuss his new book “This Exquisite Loneliness: What Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us About Creativity” with Karin Roffman, Associate Director of Public Humanities.
